Young women from rural areas in the country plan to use community radio broadcast as a means to address the issues which affect their daily lives.

Police in Harare on Tuesday tried to block a peaceful demonstration by pressure group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), who were attempting to hand over a list of demands to parliament.

The trial of 11 Congolese soldiers, those accused of raping dozens of women in the town of Fizi, South Kivu on New Year's Day, is an encouraging first step in ending impunity for sexual violence in eastern Congo. It remains to be seen whether these trials will effectively punish all the perpetrators involved, from the commanding officer to the soldiers who committed the violations.

Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Bisengimana, a senior commander with the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), turned himself in to the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (MONUSCO) on Wednesday (16 Feb) and will be transferred to a camp for demobilized soldiers in Rwanda today (17 Feb).

Attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in parts of the Central African Republic (CAR) have created a complex situation that not only limits the humanitarian response but also raises concerns over widespread human rights abuses, experts say.

I thought it would be a normal flood like the ones that happen often here; but this time was different," recalled Vittoria Amosse, who until 2008 lived in a small village on the Zambezi floodplain in Mozambique.

A few weeks ago there was a revolution in Tunisia. Some sources say the revolution was not televised, but rather twitterised. On 14 January, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali dissolved his government, called for legislative elections in six months and promised not to run in 2014. But this late decision did not quiet public anger on social media platforms, in particular Facebook and Twitter.

Iranian women are not the type of women who remain silent and consider themselves lesser than men. Unfortunately, after their revolution, women's rights have been violated. Today, we see that women are ahead of men in the rightful protests. No matter what results from the current crisis, majority of them believe that women, who make up about 65 percent of Iran's university students, will keep pushing for more rights.

It may become a landmark case to force the military to take rape and sexual assault seriously. Or it could be yet another failed attempt in a decades-long battle by women to be accepted in the armed forces.

Seventeen veterans and active-duty service members today took the first step to determining that, suing the Pentagon on charges of violating their constitutional rights to serve their country.

This morning, leading women's rights activists reiterated their position that the Afghan government's impending takeover of women's shelters will be a human rights disaster and stressed the need for international solidarity and diplomatic support for their cause. UN Dispatch was there.

The activists' main points: