Women protest against Female Genital Mutilation

 

ADDIS ABABA, 5 February (IRIN) - Four wives of African presidents joined hundreds of women in Addis Ababa on Tuesday to call for zero tolerance to female genital mutilation.The wives of leaders from Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mali and Guinea condemned the traditional practice as barbaric and called for international action against it.Chantal Campaore, the First Lady of Burkina Faso told IRIN:

 

"Female genital mutilation is the most widespread and deadly of all violence, victimising women and girls in Africa." Her comments came at an international symposium at the UN conference centre in Addis Ababa, attended by government officials from African countries and women's groups. For the first time, they are drawing up a common pan-African agenda in order to tackle the practice. According to studies, some two million girls are subjected to mutilation each year with 120 million women in 28 African countries having gone through the ordeal.

 

The Inter-African Committee - a charity working to ban FGM - hopes to incorporate a policy against the traditional practice into the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Berhane Ras-Work, who heads the IAC in Ethiopia, described FGM as "gruesome and heinous". "Africa has the highest maternal mortality rates and the root causes for this sad reality lie squarely on social attitudes and practices that go unchallenged," she said. "We need to take up the challenge and give priority and focus on the eradication of FGM, early marriage, abduction, nutritional taboos, repeated and uncontrolled pregnancies and rape," she stressed.

Keralamonitor.com

Northern children prevented from attending school

NAIROBI, 5 February (IRIN) - Officials in the district of Lira, northern Uganda, have launched an appeal to finance 36 temporary "learning centres" for children displaced by insecurity caused by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group. "The situation in Lira is terrible because over 40 primary schools, four secondary schools and two technical schools have closed down and we have no hope of them opening soon as the place is still too insecure for the children to study," Daniel Omara Atubo, a Member of Parliament for Otuke County in Lira, told IRIN.

"Teachers are displaced, the children who are supposed to go to school are displaced and their parents too are also displaced and are unable to facilitate their children to go to schools due to poverty," he said, adding that most children in Lira district had not been taught since August 2002, while a new school term was due to start next week.

Lena Schildt, from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) office in Kampala, said UNICEF would set up learning centres for Lira district "as soon as possible" which would include teaching materials and facilities. Similar centres had so far been set up in Gulu and Pader districts, she said. Over 100,000 pupils in 159 primary schools in 12 sub-counties have been affected and displaced by the LRA since August 2002, prompting the district to launch the appeal for help. Keralamonitor.com

- DRC: Cyclone leaves about 40 dead in Yumbi, Bandundu Province

KINSHASA, 5 February (IRIN) - A cyclone that swept through an area
surrounding the town of Yumbi in the northwest of Bandundu Province in
western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Sunday left about 40
people dead, according to reports by government officials and the UN
Mission in the DRC.

Speaking on Radio Okapi, one nun reported that 15 people of her diocese
had died. One doctor from the World Health Organisation reported from the
city of Mbandaka, some 300 km northeast of Yumbi, that perhaps 45 people
had died.

Although government authorities were reporting that many people had
perished, they gave no precise figure. "Many homes have been destroyed, as
have two Catholic schools, and numerous people remain buried in the
rubble," Leonard Mashako Mamba, the minister of health, said.

He added that efforts were under way to get aid to the region. Yumbi, a
town of about 30,000 inhabitants near the border of Equateur Province, is
isolated and difficult to access, even though it lies along the River
Congo. The nearest city equipped with even basic health facilities,
Lokolela, is some 220 km away. Keralamonitor.com

MOZAMBIQUE: Project hopes to boost primary education

JOHANNESBURG, 5 February (IRIN) - The Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA) is to inject CA $20 million (about US $13.2 million) into a
project to support education in Mozambique through the procurement of
learning and teaching materials.

It was hoped the current project, which began in January, would "build on
the previous educational materials project which provided more than 30
million textbooks and workbooks to students in primary grades 1-7, as well
as a limited amount of technical assistance to the Ministry of Education
(MINED)", a CIDA statement said.

The current target is to get 32 million textbooks into schools that need
them, with the aim being "to contribute to the creation of a healthy,
educated and productive human resource base in Mozambique by improving
access to and the quality of basic education materials".

The project also aims "to strengthen the capacity of the GoM [government
of Mozambique] to provide and manage the supply (publishing, printing and
distributing) of quality, gender sensitive educational teaching/learning
materials to primary school students and teachers throughout the country",
the agency added.

According to UN core indicators, Mozambique's adult literacy rate stands
at 44 percent, with female adult literacy at just 35 percent. The same
gender bias is reflected in a net enrolment rate in primary schools (for
six to 12-year-olds) of 29 percent - with girls at 26 percent and boys at
33 percent.

"Strengthening MINED's capacity to source, produce and distribute quality
textbooks in a cost effective manner and through an efficient and
effective system is key to the sustainability of the system," CIDA noted.
It hoped the ministry's capabilities to efficiently manage the financing
of as well as the procurement and distribution of educational materials
would be improved in the process of MINED's involvement in the CIDA
procurement project.

The expected outcomes of the project are: increased numbers of children in
primary grades 1-7 using text and/or exercise books in the learning
process and gaining awareness of gender and health issues, particularly
HIV/AIDS; increased numbers of teachers in primary grades 1-7 using
teaching manuals and materials in the teaching process; and improved
quality of instruction and learning through improved access to appropriate
teaching and materials.

Funding would also be used to ensure there were adequate storage
facilities in districts and schools preventing spoilage and damage to
materials, CIDA said. Keralamonitor.com