
Feminist talk

Feminist talk
Democratic Republic of Congo: Letter from the world capital of rape
By Francoise Mukuku
Francoise Mukuku reports from the world march of women against sexual violence that took place in October 2010 in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Special Rapporteur of the United Nations has named the Democratic Republic of Congo the "rape capital of the world," with 15,000 women raped in DRC only during last year. In her blog, Francoise also shares how information and...
Feminist talk
Asia-Pacific: Collecting Data on “Digital” Violence
By Lalaine P. Viado
Lalaine P. Viado reports on the “Workshop on Strengthening National Capacities to Collect Violence Against Women Statistics in the Asia-Pacific Region” which took place on 20-21 September 2010 in Bangkok. The workshop is part of inter-regional efforts to develop indicators to measure violence against women.

Feminist talk
Is Pakistan putting the UN Millennium Goals at risk?
By Nighat Dad
"The discussions I witnessed at IGF 2010 really brought home to me the scale of the challenges we still face, if we are to make meaningful progress towards the goals of the IGF in general, and MDG3 in particular." Nighat Dad from the Pakistan MDG3: Take Back the Tech! project assesses the outcomes of IGF and the Millenium Development Goals in the context of national debates and women’s rights.

Feminist talk
Gender in the online news: The 2010 GMMP
By Sonia Randhawa
Since the 1995 conference in Beijing, the Global Media Monitoring Project has provided a snapshot of gender imbalances in the world's media, once every five years. This year, they expanded the coverage from the 'traditional' media to take a look at the internet. Unfortunately, their findings were not encouraging.

Feminist talk
Lebanon: Queering the internet
By tq
Lebanon EroTICs team report-back to the local Meem group (www.meemgroup.org) about the IGF. She reflects on strategy and queer history on the Internet: "Last week, I went to Vilnius, Lithuania to represent the Lebanon team of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC)’s Exploratory Research Project into Sexuality and the Internet (EroTICs) at the...

Feminist talk
Africa and internet governance: going global or stay local?
By Francoise Mukuku
The impact of internet governance on Africa was discussed on September 16th 2010, in Vilnius, Lithuania. There was fair representation of all stakeholders. Officials from South Africa, Kenya and Tunisia were there; a representative from an internet service provider; and various Africa bodies that follow the process, such as AFRINIC, ISOC Africa and CICEWA. And there were representatives from...

Feminist talk
dot gay: what are the implications?
By Nyx McLean
It was in a dynamic coalition session on freedom of expression and freedom of the media on the internet that Schubert announced that the domain name, “dot gay” was in the pipeline. The domain name hopes to incorporate all lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer sites under one domain. Nyx looks at who is excluded, and the potential impact of a 'dot gay' domain on queer communities.
Feminist talk
First-time impressions of IGF10
By Nighat Dad
"As one door closes, another opens", they say sometimes. This is the first IGF I have attended... and yet if the initial plan is to be kept, it may be the last occurrence of this international gathering. Nighat explores why she thinks that if that's how it turns out, it will be a shame.
Feminist talk
Why I took a long flight to Vilnius
By Francoise Mukuku
Francoise examines the role that mass media play as the fourth estate or power in the world, and looks at how convergence and large media companies are threatening the positive achievements of the internet in helping to create diversity, freedom of expression and greater focus on human rights reporting.

Feminist talk
Why we should get over facebook
By ItsAllMaya
Social networking sites and privacy formed the main topics in two sessions Maya attended - but she found that the discussions were not grounded in research, that users were absent from the debates and tired assumptions dominated the rooms. What's needed, she argues, are more workable proposals that take into account a variety of research and based on how people actually use social networking...