Joyce Banda Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Public offices (1999β2009)=== Joyce Banda entered politics in 1999. She won a parliamentary seat in Malawi's third democratic election as a member of President [[Bakili Muluzi]]'s party, the [[United Democratic Front (Malawi)|United Democratic Front]]. She represented the [[Zomba Malosa (Malawi Parliament constituency)|Zomba Malosa]] constituency.<ref name="unfpa"/> Muluzi appointed her as Minister for Gender and Community Services.<ref name = "Mponda" /> As minister, she fought to enact the Domestic Violence Bill, which had failed for seven years. She designed the National Platform for Action on Orphans and Vulnerable Children and the Zero Tolerance Campaign Against Child Abuse.<ref name="unfpa"/> In 2004, she was re-elected as a member of Muluzi's Party. [[Bingu wa Mutharika]] became [[President of Malawi|President]]. Even though Banda was not a member of his party, Mutharika appointed her as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2006. Banda moved to change Malawi's recognition of the legitimate government of China from the [[Republic of China]] (on Taiwan) to the [[China|People's Republic of China]] on the mainland; she claimed the switch would bring economic benefits to Malawi.<ref name = "Mponda" /> In 2010, China finished the construction of a new parliament building in Lilongwe.<ref name = "parliament">{{cite web | title = China hands over new parliament building to Malawi | work = People's Daily Online, English | publisher = Xinhua | date = 22 May 2010 | url = http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6994852.html | access-date =22 April 2012}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page