This toolkit aims to help international health programs integrate a gender perspective in their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities, measures, and reporting. It is designed for use by health program staff working in various health sectors (such as HIV; malaria; reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health; and tuberculosis), and for various health agencies and initiatives. The toolkit will support health program staff to integrate gender in their programs, projects, and M&E activities. Its objectives are to provide processes and tools for integrating gender in a health program’s M&E activities, guidance on facilitating communication with primary stakeholders on the importance of gender and M&E, and additional resources on gender-integrated programming and M&E.
Useful Resources
The Academy for African Urban Diversity (AAUD) was launched at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) in November 2017. AAUD is a joint initiative of ACMS; the African Centre for Cities; and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. It brings together a cohort of post-fieldwork doctoral students exploring diversity in African cities to debate and theorize the political, social and economic processes surrounding Africa’s growing and diversifying cities. The initiative creates interdisciplinary engagement among young and senior scholars working on urban studies on the African continent and the collaboration will play a role in supporting the development of skills and knowledge of a new generation of Urban African scholars. The next workshop will be held in Göttingen, Germany in 2018. PhD applications are considered on a rolling basis throughout the year.
Health Systems Global Africa Region hosted a webinar on “how to submit a successful organised session abstract”, the recording of which is now available to watch online. The webinar offered tips on how participants can increase their chances of having their abstracts successfully accepted for an organised session at the Fifth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Liverpool, October 2018 (HSR2018). It gives an overview of the importance of raising the profile of African health policy and systems research at HSR2018, and how organised sessions can be a powerful way of achieving this. It presents a brief overview, a series of short presentations, and a question and answer session with participants.
Developed by Girls Not Brides to promote collaboration between civil society organisations and parliamentarians, this toolkit provides an overview of what child marriage is, and existing international legal instruments that prohibit the practice. It lists concrete examples and recommendations on how parliamentarians can take action, not only in Parliament but in their constituencies and internationally. Parliamentarians are encouraged to take action through means such as parliamentary meetings, establishing forums and meeting with civil society organisations. The toolkit will be particularly useful to hold governments accountable for their commitment to ending child marriage in target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Health Systems Global Africa Region webinar on “how to submit a successful organised session abstract” will be to offer tips on how participants can increase their chances of having their abstracts successfully accepted for an organised session at the Fifth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Liverpool, October 2018 (HSR2018). The webinar will give an overview of the importance of raising the profile of African health policy and systems research at HSR2018, and how organised sessions can be a powerful way of achieving this. Perspectives from the Programme Working Group on the symposium theme and what the Scientific Committee will be looking for in strong abstracts will be shared, as will the experiences of those who have successfully had their organised session abstracts accepted at previous global symposia.
This guide includes case studies, tips, photographs, training materials and an accompanying video on implementing community-based HIV-prevention services. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of implementation, from engaging with stakeholders and communities to how to set up teams and conduct HIV testing services that integrate important other services including screening for TB, sexually transmitted infections and non-communicable diseases.
This manual provides an accessible, practical reference to encourage and strengthen the practice of health inequality monitoring. It aims to foster regular reporting of inequalities across diverse health topics, and promote greater integration of health inequality considerations in policies, programmes and practices. It is organised according to a flow chart, showing the steps and sub-steps of the health inequality monitoring cycle, with key questions and itemised checklists of data requirements, analysis/reporting activities and/or decision points. The steps include firstly, determining the scope of monitoring, obtaining data, then analysing and reporting results before implementing changes. Relevant examples and resources, including sample table templates and recommended readings, are provided for further exploration. While the manual focuses on health at the national level, the step-by-step approach may be applied to monitor inequalities within any defined population, ranging from a community context to a multi-country context.
In June 2017 the United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with other United Nations agencies launched a new, open-access Global Abortion Policies Database. The online database contains comprehensive information on the abortion laws, policies, health standards and guidelines for WHO and United Nations (UN) Member States. It is intended for use by policy-makers, human rights bodies, nongovernmental organisations, public health researchers and civil society. The database is designed to further strengthen global and national efforts to eliminate unsafe abortion by facilitating comparative and country-specific analyses of abortion laws and policies, placing them in the context of information and recommendations from WHO technical and policy guidance on safe abortion. The main objectives of the database are to promote greater transparency of abortion laws and policies and state accountability for the protection of women and girls’ health and human rights.
Titled “The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya’s Women-Only Village” the 30-minute documentary report takes audiences to northern Kenya, “where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert,” home to the people of Samburu, which is also where Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for women from a society long-maintained as a strict patriarchy for over 500 years. “Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, is quite literally a no man’s land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men. Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. Broadly visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.”
This website is a space for community activists living near mines in southern Africa to share information, resources and experiences.
The countries currently participating in this project are: Lesotho, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique and Tanzania. Activists in each country document problems they experience and events they participate in and share this on a WhatsApp group. These posts are then shared on this site in the respective country blogs. Each country, in addition, maintains their own country blog. Additionally, Activists can view the posts on a mobile app called “Action Voices” which can be downloaded on an Android phone from the Google Play store. This website and the activities are a joint project of several organisations in southern Africa. These include:The Bench Marks Foundation – South Africa; Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) – Southern Africa; Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) – Zimbabwe; Centre for Environment Justice (CEJ) – Zambia; Associação de Apoio e Assistência Jurídica às Comunidades (AAAJC) – Mozambique; Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), Tanzania and Maluti Community Development Forum – Lesotho.