Papua New Guinea's new opposition leader, Belden Namah says his group will support a bill to have more women elected to parliament.

The bill proposing 22 reserved seats for women is now before Parliament for debate and approval.

Mr Namah told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program he supports the bill.

The ministers in charge of gender equality in the Portuguese Speaking Community (CPLP) Wednesday in Luanda, reaffirmed the international commitments concerning women human rights.

This is contained in a 10-pooint declaration adopted at the end of the extraordinary meeting of the ministers responsible for gender equality held on Wednesday with the theme "Gender, health and violence".

The Social Welfare Ministry and the Fiji Women's Crisis Center conducted a weeklong training for the people of Vunaniu village in Serua Tikina to create awareness on Zero Tolerance Violence Free Community.

More than 1,100 women are raped every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making sexual violence against women 26 times more common than previously thought, a study concluded Tuesday.

Although the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ended in 2002, the war on women and girls continues. "Sexual and gender based violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC," wrote U.S.

A group of 12 women from Ivory Coast, Guinea and Uganda reduced members of an African Union panel to tears as they told their personal stories of rape and police brutality.

"I can tell you those ambassadors in Addis (Ababa in Ethiopia) were crying," said Bineta Diop, who organised the meeting about a month ago with the AU peace and security council to highlight the plight of women on the continent.

More than 400 000 women are raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo every year, according to a study by US researchers published last Wednesday, but the United Nations (UN) has expressed doubt over the findings.

Sat in the front row in army fatigues and desert boots and patiently listening to children giving their presentation, Lieutenant Colonel Ivette Galarza stands out. Not just because of the way she is dressed, or because she is American, but particularly because she is female.

The civil war ended two years ago this month, but for war-affected women—widows, mothers, daughters, and former rebels— the struggle to survive rages on.

Nearly one-third of families that have returned to the former conflict zone in the north are headed by women single-handedly trying to make ends meet, said a recent study by the Sri Lankan government and the United Nations office here.

May 17 will be a historic day in the annals of Sri Lanka's legal sphere when Supreme Court Judge Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake will become Sri Lanka's first woman chief justice.