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On 2 August 2010, the Organisation of First Ladies of Africa (OAFLA) met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. OAFLA decided to make its permanent office in Addis Ababa at its 7th January 2010 meeting. At the meeting they discussed the improvement of the lives of women in Africa through the management and eventual eradication of HIV/AIDS. These remarkable women are also committed to poverty alleviation and gender equality. OAFLA was instituted to fight against the spread of the deadly virus across the continent through education and the implementation of preventive measures among their country's populations. OAFLA also convened on 20 September 2010 in New York to participate in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit, on the issue of women and children malnutrition.

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Wanted: Radical Feminists for the Trucking Industry

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Wanted: Radical Feminists for the Trucking Industry

"This is the year 2010, right? Just checking. I've been a trucking industry blogger for several years, with well over a million readers, and, been a driver for a lot longer than that. Like most people looking in on the trucking industry I've had opinions and judgments based on notions of what I thought I was looking at. As I became more and more entrenched and involved in issues as they pertain to truck drivers (and that's an entire book in itself if we're talking general controversy), my jaw would hit the floor on numerous occasions. The subject of this editorial is one of these "occasions", and in my view the most important one. Many industries, in past decades, have been battlegrounds for women's rights on several fronts. We're talking - equal pay, promotions, fair treatment, and of course, sexual harassment and abuse. What would you say if I told you we still had an industry here in America where women were routinely harassed, abused and even placed in trucks as part of training procedures with known male convicted felons of sex crimes." ~ Daniel Audet

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Macy's Proves AfriCan

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Can you imagine Michael Jordan hitting the game winning shot and then asking the media not to say anything? Or Barak Obama winning the presidential election and refusing to talk about his victory? Or You discovering the cure for cancer, but not wanting anyone to know? Well, that’s in essence what Macy’s Department Stores have done. Macy's is the top department store chain in the U.S., with more than 800 stores in 45 states and annual sales of more than $26 billion.

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Sexual Warfare in DRC | First Lady Leads Battle (Video)

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Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-ChiefLast Modified: 17:23 p.m. EDT, 18 October 2010

First Lady Marie Olive Kabila - Democratic Republic of Congo

BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo - First Lady Olive Lembe Kabila, the wife of President Joseph Kabila led approximately 17,000 women on Sunday in a march against sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The term 'weaponized rape,' has come to define the practice of raping women as a means of subjugating and decimating the enemy.

Most of the mass rapes which have occurred in the conflict ridden DRC, were perpetrated in the eastern region of the country where fighting is the heaviest.

Victims range in age from girls as young as 2-years to women as old as 90.

Defying the stigma associated with rape, throngs of Congo’s rape survivors filled the streets in Bukavu. CNN reports. “They have had enough, enough, enough, enough,“ said Nita Vielle, a Congelese activist. “Enough of the war, of the rape, of nobody paying attention to what’s happening to them.”

A U.N. report stated that 15,000 women were raped in eastern Congo last year, in regions where rebel groups move in and attack civilian populations they consider to be government sympathizers, employing systemic rape as a tool of warfare.

Methodical mass rape has plagued eastern Congo for years, but the situation has only gotten worse. In one particularly vicious spate, at least 303 rapes occurred between July 30 and August 2 in the Walikale region of North Kivu province alone.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vGanZopQHg]

Read more about the problem of rape and war in the Congo via BBC News coverage here.

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Twitter: @nahmias_report Editor: @ayannanahmias
 
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