Will the lot of Egypt's women improve after the country's revolution?

The Government has published a review of the National Action plan on UN Security Council Resolution 1325 Women, Peace and Security.

On Friday, President Obama announced that all American troops would leave Iraq by year's end. Newspapers and broadcasts--to say nothing of Facebook and Twitter--hummed with the news.

The United States is working for reform of nationality laws that hurt women, says Maria Otero, the State Department's under secretary for democracy and global affairs.

Nationality laws discriminate against women in at least 30 countries, Otero said at a Refugees International event October 25 at the U.S. Institute of Peace. These laws, she said, limit women's ability to acquire, retain and transmit citizenship to their children.

U.N. peacekeepers' violations of women they are supposed to protect was brought uncomfortably close to home by the recent screening of "The Whistleblower" at U.N. headquarters earlier this month.

After the Oct. 14 screening, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a panel discussion by noting "much progress since this dark period portrayed in this film," while also acknowledging there is more work to be done.

Structurally, Tunisia's transitional government led by interim president Fouad Mebazza, interim prime minister Beji Caid el Sebsi, and minister of women's affairs Lilia Laabidi, seems to be making a concerted effort to ensure that women's equality is and remains a key electoral concern. April's gender parity law was just the beginning.

As Ben Ali's regime first teetered and then toppled, women were on the front lines of the struggle as protesters, journalists, Tweeter, bloggers, and workers. Images of women wrapped in the Tunisian flag, women standing face-to-face with armed security forces, and women shouting and singing pro-democracy slogans went viral in the days leading up to Ben Ali's flight.

Although the gaze of global media has shifted elsewhere –increasingly violent protests in Yemen and Syria, the fall of Gaddafi in Libya, women's suffrage in Saudi Arabia – one cannot forget the revolution that started it all: Tunisia. Tunisians launched the Arab Spring uprisings against autocratic rulers when they toppled president Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in January.

It's the eve of a busy week of collaboration, advocacy and action for "1325" activists who make the annual pilgrimage to the UN Security Council for a very important "anniversary" - the Open Debate on "1325".

Hundreds of Yemeni women on Wednesday set fire to traditional female veils to protest the government's brutal crackdown against the country's popular uprising, as overnight clashes in the capital and another city killed 25 people, officials said.