News stories by Thalif Deen* - IPS/TerraViva

Whenever gender empowerment is a vibrant topic of discussion internationally, some of the countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America are invariably singled out for their success stories in politics, education, health care or civil liberties even as Africa is mostly left out of political reckoning - and wrongly so.

The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.

A longstanding proposal for the creation of a special U.N. agency for women - officially called a 'gender entity' - is apparently moving at the sluggish pace of a paralytic snail.

Against the backdrop of a two-week U.N. meeting on gender empowerment, the London-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has blasted the government of Saudi Arabia for its feudal system of justice where women continue to be victimised because of their gender.

The 45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), presiding over one of the largest gatherings of women at the United Nations, listened Monday to dozens of speakers spelling out the successes and failures of gender empowerment worldwide.

When the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced the grim news that 2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record, the U.N. agency also stressed last week the widespread water-related calamities caused by global warming.