When a middle-aged mother took a taxi alone from Baghdad to Nasiriyah, about 300 kilometres south earlier this year, her 20-year-old driver stopped on the way, pulled her to the side of the road and raped her. And that began a telling legal struggle. "She is not a simple case," says Hanaa Edwar, head of the Iraqi rights-based Al-Amal Association, established in Baghdad after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The Commander of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), Major General Luiz Ramos, has written a letter to the Haitian people regarding the incidents of rape in Port-Salut.

For Maria Saifuddin Effendi, it began with a bar of chocolate. As a Pakistani, Maria's first experience of India was her Indian roommate at a South-Asia workshop: a roommate who greeted an irritable and jetlagged Maria with a warm smile and a bar of Cadburys' chocolate. The following year, a second workshop brought her to New Delhi, to another Indian roommate, another series of midnight conversations, and another set of Indian friends.

Speaking to the US congress in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu boasted that his country is a beacon of freedom in the Middle East and North Africa, that it is the only place where Arabs "enjoy real democratic rights".

August Town has the reputation of being a violent area with little social progress, but the community's Women's Action Group (WAG) is determined to change that.

The group has already been making strides in changing that perception since being launched over four years ago.

For Maria Saifuddin Effendi, it began with a bar of chocolate. As a Pakistani, Maria's first experience of India was her Indian roommate at a South-Asia workshop: a roommate who greeted an irritable and jetlagged Maria with a warm smile and a bar of Cadburys' chocolate. The following year, a second workshop brought her to New Delhi, to another Indian roommate, another series of midnight conversations, and another set of Indian friends.

Migrant workers living in a squatter settlement outside Tripoli have claimed that nearly two dozen women in the camp have been raped since opposition forces began their final push on the capital two weeks ago.

Libyan women's groups recently staked their claim to a more meaningful role in the reconciliation and reconstruction of their country. They noted, among other things, that women were largely absent from the recent Paris conference convened to discuss Libya's future.

Nepal's efforts to help conflict-affected women and girls gain a stronger footing in society may not be enough for the widows, rape victims and former Maoist combatants now tainted by social stigma, activists say.

When the sun sets on the refugee camp for black Africans that has sprung up at the marina in this town six miles west of Tripoli, the women here brace for the worst.

The rebels who ring the camp suddenly open fire. Then they race into the camp, shouting "gabbour, gabbour" — Arabic for whore — and haul away young women, residents say.