Women's empowerment and the reconstruction of Sudan

Southern Sudanese women -- of the oppressed, rebelling Christian South of Sudan -- will be going to Oslo to ask donors to focus on women's empowerment.

Next week's meeting, set for Monday and Tuesday, will gather some 60 delegates including UN chief Kofi Annan, Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha, SPLM/A leader John Garang and ministers from bilateral and multilateral donors like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
They will be looking at an assessment that says Sudan needs nearly eight billion dollars (six billion euros) for reconstruction and development over the next two years to recover from the north-south civil war.
The international community is being asked to fund about 2.6 billion of that with the rest coming from Sudan's own resources, particularly oil revenue, according to the assessment which was released in early March.

I have avoided using the term "women's rights" because I am beginning to examine the idea that women's empowerment is a right. In my mind a right is something natural that simply exists without your reaching out and making it happen. But it could be my personal definition of a right that is ... wrong. The term certainly gets misused a lot by people who want to wrap themselves in the victim mantle, and so I am becoming allergic to it.