Jezebel: Rwanda

Charity Gives People In Haiti These Awesome All-Terrain Wheelchairs

Jenna Sauers — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EDT

Last night at a premiere party for a movie — The Way, although I saw neither (star) Martin Sheen nor (director) Emilio Estevez and therefore didn't get to pester them with questions about Catholicism or Steve Jobs or whatever — I met a lady who runs a pretty cool charity. More »

Former Rwandan Women's Minister Convicted Of Genocide

Irin Carmon — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 10:30:09 EDT

As minister for women and family affairs in Rwanda, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko ordered the rape of women and girls and participated in genocide. She's the first woman to be convicted by the United Nations tribunal, seventeen years after the horrific events in Rwanda. More »

Text Messages Are Saving Pregnant Women's Lives

Irin Carmon — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:15:00 EST

A joint UN initiative equipping pregnant women and health care workers in Rwanda with mobile phones has led one hospital to see maternal deaths decline. They went from ten the previous year — to zero. More »

Banana-Based Pad Maker Elizabeth Scharpf Wants Rwandan Women Educated. Period.

Fast Company — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:04:00 EDT

Elizabeth Scharpf, founder of Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), is partnering with networks of women in Rwanda to make and sell sanitary pads made from banana leaves. More »

Sexual Assault In Congo: Activists Speak Out

Katy Kelleher — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 18:20:00 EDT

Lisa Shannon became an activist in Africa after watching a moving episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Alice Walker has played a key part in the feminist movement for years. Recently, they shared their thoughts on rape in the Congo. More »

Obama Jeanswear: Denim With The (Unofficial) Presidential Seal Of Approval

Sadie Stein — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EDT

Meet Obama Jeanswear, Rwanda's denim tribute to the POTUS. Says Racked, "We love how Obama Jeanswear creatively re-interprets the seal of the United States into something a little more imperial, flanking a shield with griffins and whatnot." [Racked] More »

Archeologists Find 16th Century Golden Girl • Female Ski Jumpers Lose Bid To Compete In Vancouver

Katy Kelleher — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:30:00 EST

• French experts believe Diane de Poitiers, mistress of 16th-century king, Henry II, was killed by her desire to stay youthful. Forensic experts found evidence of chronic gold intoxication - meaning she probably drank gold in attempts to stay pretty. More »

Survivor

Sadie Stein — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:40:00 EST

"Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape" combines portraits of women raped during Rwanda's 1994 genocide - often repudiated as a result of the children that resulted- and harrowing first-person accounts. [Aperture Foundation] More »

Ashley Judd Is Not Just Another Tinseltown Disaster Tourist

Dodai Stewart — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:20:00 EDT

Newsweek writer Christopher Dickey recently interviewed Ashley Judd, who visited eastern Congo about six months ago with Population Services International, and witnessed the tens of thousands of refugees there. "Goma," says Judd, "is a shithole." Writes Dickey, "the description is perfectly accurate." There are no paved roads, there are giant potholes, there's rubble and dust, and there was a volcanic eruption not that long ago. More »

Last month Rwanda's parliament became the...

Margaret Hartmann — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:20:00 EDT

Last month Rwanda's parliament became the first in the world where women have a majority, with 56 percent of the seats held by women. As the country rebuilt after the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed and many women were systematically raped, President Paul Kagame enforced policies to help women economically and politically. In 2003 the constitution was rewritten to require that 30 percent of parliamentary and cabinet seats go to women. So far the parliament has repealed the law that prevents women from inheriting land and passed bills to combat domestic violence and child abuse. A committee is combing through the legal code to purge it of more discriminatory laws. "The fact that we are so many has made it possible for men to listen to our views," said lawmaker Espérance Mwiza. "Now that we're a majority, we can do even more." [The Washington Post] More »

Women Will Rule The World… Eventually

Dodai Stewart — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:30:00 EDT

On the heels of the news that a woman could be the next Israeli Prime Minister, a study released by the United Nations Development Fund for Women claims that women have entered politics in greater numbers than ever in the past decade. The New York Times reports that women account for 18.4% of parliament members worldwide. The good news is that the proportion of women in power has increased by 7 percentage points since 1995. The bad news? If things continue this way, it will take until 2045 for women to reach parity in the developing world. That's 37 years from now. More »

Bette Davis Gets Stamp'd • Rwanda Women Dominate The Parliament

Maria — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:30:00 EDT

• A 42-cent commemorative stamp will be released tomorrow in Boston featuring a portrait of real-life and fictional Jezebel, Bette Davis. Think the mail her stamps are on will have a bumpy ride? • According the preliminary election results, Rwanda will be the first country where women outnumber men in parliament; females have taken 44 of the 80 seats. • The lesbian romantic comedy, I Can't Think Straight, which is written and directed by Shamim Sarif, has been picked up for North American distribution by Here! films. • A survey of 422 Midwestern gay and bisexual men revealed the internalized homonegativity (or negative attitudes towards homosexuality) predicted poorer mental and sexual health in men. • More »

Ivory Towers

Sadie Stein — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:50:00 EDT

In the past year, poachers in Congo have killed a fifth of the Savannah elephants in Virguna National Park. In the past ten days alone, Rwandan rebels have killed seven of the elephants in Virunga, along Congo's eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda."We've definitely lost 20 percent of the population this year and probably more," said a park ranger. "We have rangers with them, and we're trying to reinforce them. But (the rangers) are outnumbered 20 to one." Conservationists believe that today only 300 elephants remain in what was once the world's largest population of Savannahs. A large part of the problem is a growing demand for ivory in China, which last month was granted permission by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species "to buy 108 tons of ivory stocks from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe," allowing poachers to sell the stolen ivory on the legitimate market. [Reuters] More »

We want to dislike Cindy McCain, we really...

Megan Carpentier — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

We want to dislike Cindy McCain, we really do. She was probably one of those perpetuperky cheerleader types as a kid, and, as an adult, she's the wife of the guy we don't want to see elected because of, among other things, his stance on women's rights. But then she's all playing with the cute kids from Operation Smile and writing OpEds about women's coffee cooperatives in Rwanda and the power of forgiveness and how women are the backbone of society and we just.. can't. [Wall Street Journal] More »

Foreign Affairs

Dodai Stewart — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:45:00 EDT

The Miss Nyampinga beauty contest, in which students from Rwandan universities and colleges compete, presents a unique challenge in a country ripped apart by genocide. There is tension over defining beauty in Rwanda, reports The Christian Science Monitor. During the 1994 genocide, "the first fact was to see the nose to tell if this is a Tutsi or this is a Hutu," says Cyrille Nshimiyimana, a second-year medical student. Can a beauty pageant help in a country where previously, you could be killed if your nose was too wide? Mr. Nshimiyimana says of the winner: "She must be pretty, in her face and body… She must have small eyes. But we don't look at the nose. Here in Rwanda, we have a problem [with] the nose." The contestants are also all "Milan-model thin," which some students think is not an accurate representation of Rwandan women. We understand their frustration! [Christian Science Monitor] More »

Women Are The Economic Backbone Of The New Rwanda

Jessica G. — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:30:00 EDT

Those Rwandan women who are employed making "peace baskets" for Macy's — a job that helps them to repair the fissures of the ethnic civil war that saw the deaths of some 800,000 people fourteen years ago? They are part of a wave of women helping to lift Rwanda out of the poverty caused by the Hutu/Tutsi conflict. Not surprisingly, the economic and political contributions of women are the main fuel for Rwanda's current economic revival. According to Washington Post's Anthony Faiola, the genocide of Tutsis by Hutu militias and subsequent retributions left Rwanda with a population that's 60% female. This, along with new laws passed in 1999 that allowed women to inherit property, left the door open for more women to start businesses, even though in Rwanda's more patriarchal society, many women must still ask their husbands for permission before making economic choices. Now, women are running coffee plantations and graining mills, and often, they're out-earning their male counterparts. More »

Justine Henin Retires • Basket-Weaving Brings Women Together

Jessica G. — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Justine Henin, the # 1-ranked tennis player in the world, is retiring at 25. The battling Belgian is going out on top! • In other sports news, Kashmiri girls are beginning to play soccer more and more. An under-19 tournament will be held in Kargil next month. • A new study has shown that obese adults are twice as likely to suffer from depression (among other mental illnesses) as adults of normal weight. • Nutritionists have found that dairy intake does not necessarily promote weight loss, despite what certain marketing messages would like to have us believe. .• Chemicals called pyrethrins, found in pet shampoos and insecticides, may cause autism in unborn and very young children. • Rwandan women are weaving "peace" baskets to be sold at Macy's; one of the weavers, Iphigenia Mukantabana, a Tutsi, works alongside Epiphania Mukanyndwi, a Hutu — whose husband helped kill Iphigenia's entire family. • A new dating site called RocknRollDating.com pairs people off by musical preference. • The makers of "the original fitness skirt," SkirtSports, are sponsoring the SkirtChaser Race Series in which women wearing skirts are chased by men. • Women working in hard sciences find that it still has an "old boys club" atmosphere, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation. Fifty-two percent drop out of these fields between ages 35 and 40. More »

Pregnant Women In Poverty Often Die Needlessly

Dodai Stewart — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:30:00 EDT

Reading depressing statistics can be numbing. Your eyes glaze over, you feel paralyzed with woe, and yet how else can one convey the details of a global crisis? So here goes: Worldwide, 500,000 women die in childbirth every year; more than 90 percent live in Africa or Asia, and almost all are poor, according to The Washington Post. In Sudan, one in 50 women die during childbirth. That's 2,030 dead mothers per 100,000 births. In Haiti, 100 out of every 100,000 pregnant women die (down from 1,400 per 100,000. The US maternal mortality rate is 14 per 100,000.) The UN would like to reduce maternal mortality by 75% by the year 2015, but progress is already probably too slow to meet that goal. The thing is, some solutions that would save lives are simple and low-tech. For instance: More »

Paris Hilton Will Tour Rwanda To...Shoot A Reality Show, Newsweek Reveals

Moe — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:00:51 EDT

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Where the fuck has Paris Hilton been all these Britney-crazed days? Now we know! This week's Newsweek tracks down the star in her undisclosed location and reveals she is in hiding after experiencing a crisis of conscience in jail. "When I had time to reflect, I felt empty inside," she says. So she cut her hair! And then wore a wig for her appearance in Newsweek. And she's going to Rwanda for a whole five days where she will touch children and "resort to eating candy bars" if that's what it takes to get through all that grim reality! And also film a reality show called The Philanthropist about the whole thing. It's all a part, Newsweek maintains, of the mindboggling duality that is Paris!

Hilton does have a kind of schizophrenic voice. When she meets someone, she puts on that familiar slow whisper, almost as if she's checking you out before she lets her guard down. When she does, she's sweet and chatty, like a high-school girl hoping to win your vote for homecoming queen. "I think she only uses her real voice with people who are close to her," says her sister, Nicky. "It's a rather weird concept, if you think about it.

Let it be known: Women's magazines are good...

Jennifer — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:45:00 EDT

Let it be known: Women's magazines are good for something! An organization called Women to Women brings old magazines to women in Rwanda, who then in turn rip the magazines up into teeny pieces which they then turn into beads. Which they then sell to a very nice-sounding woman named Lulu Frost who then turns them into pretty pretty jewelry. So Rwandan women get to learn a trade and have a business and you get to wear a shredded Cosmo around your neck. Everybody wins! [HuffPo] More »

Emotionally Retarded Hubbies Are Nothing New

amparry — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:00:00 EDT

A new study indicates that 90% of pregnant women feel stressed during pregnancy, usually over a number of "taboo" topics that they don't feel like they can discuss publicly. Among them? Nearly two-thirds worry that their partners don't appreciate how tired they are and write off any emotional outbursts as "hormonal" — ladies, having a douchebag for a baby daddy is not a taboo topic. Perhaps Britney will take your calls! [Guardian Unlimited]