Political parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo are struggling to recruit women into their ranks to run for parliament, despite a legal requirement to do so and a belief that greater numbers of female parliamentarians are critical to advancing women's rights.

Somali women who have escaped drought and war in their home country to Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp tell CBC News they faced desperate journeys where sexual violence is commonplace, but risk being marginalized by other refugees if their stories of abuse are heard.

On 5 December, on the tenth anniversary of the Bonn Agreement, Germany will host the Bonn II conference. There are exaggerated views in the Afghan public about what the conference is trying to achieve, that – with the ‘talks about talks' continuing - it might even embark on setting up a new composition of power in Kabul.

The United Nations said today that Uruguay should conduct a full and thorough investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by its military personnel serving with the world body's peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

Alberto Breccia, a presidential spokesman, said "there is a criminal complaint drawn up by the military" to be filed locally as is the procedure with suspected crimes by peacekeepers. He did not give a time frame.

Spanish film producer Paula Palacios is currently travelling through Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus as part of her multi-country documentary examining the daily life and plight of refugee women.

“Women refugees: authentic heroines” was commissioned by Al-Jazeera television and is produced with the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Kyiv.

In 1999, Kathryn Bolkovac, a single mother from Nebraska and a seasoned cop, joined the U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia, a country still in tumult after its brutal civil war. Her job was to investigate the sex trafficking of young women from Eastern Europe. Once she began collecting evidence from the victims she discovered that a number of U.N.

Women are particularly good at building peace and creating social change. On August 9, 1956, 20 000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against proposed amendments to the Urban Areas Act of 1950 – the infamous apartheid-era “pass laws” that sought to restrict where people could live and work on the basis of race.

By now you may have heard about an accusation of terrible cruelty on the part of Uruguayan peacekeepers in Haiti. A group of men are alleged to have raped a young Haitian man, aged 18. Apparently there is even grainy cell phone video camera footage of the alleged incident in which the peacekeepers are shown laughing. This is just awful on so many levels.

At this week's conference on Libya in Paris, the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) and the international community talk about "inclusiveness" in the new country's future. It seems strange, then, that half of the population - women - seem to be excluded from the discussions on the future of their country.