Seizing on a rare opportunity, Toms River resident Brandon Karkovice was the first to ask Ireland's first female President Mary Robinson a question Tuesday night.

Robinson, a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was the featured keynote speaker at the 10th annual Monmouth University Institute for Global Understanding Convention.

Black women continued to be marginalised despite South Africa's Constitution being among the most progressive in the world, President Jacob Zuma said on Monday.

In a message celebrating Commonwealth Day, Zuma said although many women had been empowered through the Constitution, many others still lived a life of poverty.

Police in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, disrupted meetings and marches observing International Women's Day, detaining a speaker at a meeting and 17 trade union demonstrators.

Sources said police raided a meeting called by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights at a church in Bulawayo's Luveve suburb, detaining speaker Prisca Dube who was released two hours later.

"Women in Zimbabwe are largely seen as a huge demographic to be exploited by politicians who seek our support," says Ntombikayise Mswela. "But when we take to the streets to demand respect and our rights from the same government we are thrown into prison.

The official spearheading United Nations efforts to combat the scourge of sexual violence during war today welcomed the decision of authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to prosecute several high-ranking military officers accused of rape.

Gender trainers and women's rights advocates have been urged to hold each other accountable in the work they do.

The regional director of United Nations Women, Elizabeth Cox, made the comment at a Fiji Women's Crisis Centre gender training of trainers workshop on Monday.

Life after Haiti's earthquake has been especially difficult and dangerous for displaced women and girls. In addition to the ongoing crises of homelessness and cholera, a chronic emergency of sexual violence prevails in the settlements where hundreds of thousands still live, well over a year after the disaster.

The Namibia National Women's Organisation (Nanawo) has expressed serious concern over the Libyan situation and condemned attacks on Libya by "some European and American selfish economic expansion forces".

"It is very sad to note how international organisation fuels the situation through military intervention," said Nanawo's chief for information and mobilisation, Eunice Iipinge.

International human rights group, Amnesty International, this week called for police to refrain from violating the rights of women in Zimbabwe.

The Central Committee of the Palestinian Democratic Union convened Saturday in Ramallah and Gaza City and elected the first ever female secretary-general of a Palestinian faction, Zahira Kamal.

Kamal was born in Jerusalem in 1945 and has held several official political positions. She was the first Palestinian Minister of Women's Affairs.