Violence against Women in Pakistan
Jamila Khan, (not her real name) was confident when she described her narrow escape from an honour killing in Pakistan's Punjab Province. "Women were always hated in my household. My mother hated having girls," the 25-year-old told UN IRIN in a January 9 story in the Pakistani, capital, Islamabad. Khan said she was stopped from progressing in every aspect of life and had to fight to go to school. According to Pakistan's Human Rights Commission (HRCP), honor killings and other forms of violence against women are increasing, in part because �people are getting away with it, and there is poor prosecution," Kamila Hyat, a joint director of the HRCP, told IRIN. Pakistan Women's Association NGO leader Shanaz Bokhari called for �domestic violence legislation which can handle these cases if we are to save the lives of hundreds of innocent women in this country." Read: UN IRIN and Women�s Enews January 9 story, Young African Women Reject Genital Mutilation.

CHINA FAMILY PLANNING POLICY
At the National Work Conference on Family Planning, Zhang Weiqing, Minister of the State Family Planning Commission, said China encourages voluntary family planning in rural areas and has been trying to turn the project from an administrative order into a choice. Xinhua General News Service reported January 10 that Zhang said rights of people in deciding their family size should be respected. During the past five years, farmers in east China's Anhui Province, where rural residents account for the majority of the provincial population, have been encouraged to manage and supervise family planning efforts by themselves. Xinhua noted that the move has greatly enhanced the quality of local family planning and 85 percent of the population said they were satisfied with the self-regulated method.

FREE PRIMARY EDUCATION ARRIVES IN KENYA
The new president, Mwai Kibaki, began immediately to revamp Kenya's public education and human rights, seeking to rebuild a country frayed under the long rule of Daniel Arap Moi. The New York Times reported January 7 that Kibaki got crowds roaring with glee when he promised during his presidential campaign that he would eliminate primary school fees. He won the Dec. 27 election in a landslide. According to The Times. Kibaki fulfilled his promise when students returning from the holidays to the country's 17,000 primary schools found that the fees were no more. But they also found overflowing classrooms in some parts of the country as many parents who could not afford to send their children to class under the old policy took advantage of the new rules. School officials promised to find room for all eventually. Read: The New York Times

AIDS IN AFRICA
Agence France Presse reported January 8 that despite efforts against HIV/AIDS, some poor African nations are still failing to stop its spread, with the death toll undermining agriculture and educational systems. The U.N. envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Stephen Lewis, a former Canadian diplomat, said the world is witnessing the "grinding down" of society in countries like Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Swaziland. "What is required is a combination of political will and resources," Lewis told a conference at U.N. headquarters. "The political will is increasingly there. The money is not." He called the devastation by HIV/AIDS a "mass murder by complacency". Lewis reported that women in Africa are "the centre of the pandemic" because while they care for the victims, they become vulnerable because they suffer from lack of empowerment, sexual autonomy and gender equality.

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS
On January 10, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote: �Over the last few years conservative groups in President Bush's support base have declared war on condoms, in a campaign that is downright weird -- but that, if successful, could lead to millions of deaths from AIDS around the world.� Criticizing the Bush administrations policy even further, Kristof wrote: �So far President Bush has not fully signed on to the campaign against condoms, but there are alarming signs that he is clambering on board. Last month at an international conference in Bangkok, U.S. officials demanded the deletion of a recommendation for �consistent condom use� to fight AIDS and sexual diseases. So what does this administration stand for? Inconsistent condom use?� He concluded: �In the time it has taken to read this column, 28 people have died of AIDS, including 5 children. An additional 49 people have become infected. It's imperative that we get over our squeamishness, accept that condoms are flawed but far better than nothing, recognize that condoms no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain, and ensure that couples in places like Botswana get more than one condom per year.� Read: New York Times

Editorials and opinion pieces continue to condemn the Bush administration�s attacks on the ICPD Programme of Action. A January 6 editorial by The Detroit Free Press noted that �The Bush administration never seems more out of touch with global reality than when it wades into issues of population control.� The Palm Beach Post chimed in January 2: �Substituting extreme religious ideology for science to satisfy a small number of voters not only goes against the thinking of most Americans. It endangers the health of people here and abroad, and it's one more way the U.S. needlessly makes enemies.� Read: The Detroit Free Press, and The Palm Beach Post

�What no one seems to be noticing, though�much less crying out about�is the slow but steady assault on women's rights happening under our current president,� wrote Melissa Feltcher Stoeltje in her January 5 column in The San Antonio Express-News (TX). �As members of the GOP stumble over each other to showcase their racial sensitivity post-Lott, telling voters they don't want to return to an era of separate drinking fountains and drugstore dining counters, it seems many want to turn the gender clock back to the '50s, when a woman's place was in the home, teens lived in a state of (now deadly) sexual ignorance and females seeking abortions were forced into back alleys. �I hope I live long enough to see insensitivity to women by our leaders get the anger it deserves,� a female reader recently wrote to the New York Times. So do I.� Read: The San Antonio Express-News

Susan Gladin wrote in her January 5 column in The Chapel Hill Herald (NC), �What is the link between Orange County citizens and the U.N. Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA)? You might argue that there is none�that world population issues belong over there, away from here. You'd be wrong, and you would miss an opportunity to participate in a grassroots groundswell that is one of the most exciting movements I've witnessed.� Gladin highlighted Jane Roberts� and Lois Abraham�s 34 Million Friends Campaign, asking her readers to consider: �If I send $1 and ask six friends to send $1, and they do�and each of them asks six friends, and they comply�it would take only 11 repetitions of this cycle for the UNFPA to have $ 60 million! Heck, contact 10 friends and they'd have $100 million, as long as NOBODY BREAKS THE CHAIN.� She concluded, �So go out and vote with your bucks today. Send your $1 (and more) to UNFPA, and send this message to your friends to give to their friends. The current fund of $183,060 needs to be multiplied by 186 to reach the goal of $34 million. That can happen quickly, IF YOU DON'T BREAK THE CHAIN.� Read: Chapel Hill Herald

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The above summary was written by Elena Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700. Redistributio