incommunicado

NEW YORK 19 March 2010 (Sex Work Awareness for APC)

APC has teamed up with Sex Work Awareness in a study to look at content filtering systems in public libraries with internet access in the United States, with an eye towards reproductive health and sexuality. Find out more and take the survey!

KAFANCHAN 11 March 2010 (John Dada for APCNews)

Since January, sectarian strife has ripped through Nigerian communities. “A mass burial took place the day before yesterday and body counts are close to three hundred with over 80% of them women and children,” APC member John Dada told APC. “It is ironic that in the month of the Celebration of Women’s Day, such atrocities are being visited on innocent women and children.” Women are culturally respected as the givers of life and John blames deepening poverty and economic alienation for the cultural reversal but he sees a potential solution.

CALGARY 10 March 2010 (LC and KAH for APCNews)

In rural Pakistan girls schools are sometimes burned to the ground so when 29 year-old Huda Sarfraz and her team started to teach Punjabi girls how to create websites and use online chat she feared they might be run out of town. However the girls clamoured to learn as much as the boys did and —overturning societal taboos— over-subscribed for the extra-curricular classes – ending up producing prize-winning websites. As a result of exposure to APC’s Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM), and despite their own cultural reservations, Sarfraz’s team focused specifically on getting girls and women teachers involved. “Initially, we only saw two groups to work with — students and teachers. However because of GEM, we looked at them as four—girl students, boy students, women teachers and men teachers,” says Sarfraz.

ISLAMABAD 8 March 2010 (Shazhad Ahmad for Bytes for All)

While members of the Pakistani parliament were on a diplomatic trip in the United States to talk about the impact of the ar on terror on northern rural tribes in the country, they were asked by airport security in Washington to be body-scanned. The right not to undergo a body scan is a privilege given to parliamentarians the world over. APC member Bytes for All in Pakistan applauds the Pakistani parliamentarians’ firm stance and refusal to be scanned.

NEW YORK 3 March 2010 (GenderIT)

A small team of the APC women’s programme is in New York from 1-12, blogging and twitting from the UN headquarters. While governments are busy reviewing the Beijing Platform of Action, civil society organisations are struggling to participate in the process, and are being kept at bay. Yet they are still managing to keep busy by organising side events, networking, and advocating for the inclusion of a women’s rights perspective in all the discussions. APC is closely following the discussions about communications rights and the role ICTs play within this. Read GenderIT’s coverage.

MONTEVIDEO 26 February 2010 (APC WNSP)

“As feminists, we are creating our own media and disrupting and challenging mainstream notions of identity and what women are or should be. We are self-representing, to recast ourselves and challenge stale notions of what women are or should be. We are demonstrating the multiplicity and diversity of who we are”, writes APC women’s programme as a prologue to the Beijing+15 review process that is starting on March 1st in New York.