ARLINGTON — In the vicious civil war that consumed his homeland, Moses Geng Ajou's village in Southern Sudan was burned down twice. At 7 years old, he fled, joining thousands of Lost Boys who braved crocodile attacks and hunger in a long journey to safety that eventually landed them in the United States.

Media must play a larger role in empowering women in Lebanon and the wider the Middle East and North Africa region, a chorus of United Nations experts said Tuesday.

The collection of regional experts assembled at the U.N.'s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia headquarters in Downtown Beirut for a two-day conference on improving gender-based equality and promoting regional female participation.

Domestic violence accounts for around half of all reported cases of physical abuse in Lebanon, according to a report released Tuesday.

The “Women's complaints between the Penal Code and the Protection Law,” study was conducted by KAFA (Enough Violence and Discrimination) in the Mount Lebanon region during 2009 and 2010.

On November 25, 2010, Lebanon joined over 55 countries around the world by organising the first White Ribbon Campaign in the Middle East. The campaign carried out by KAFA (enough) Violence & Exploitation, the National Coalition for legislating protection of women from family violence, & Oxfam GB, started on November 25 and will last 16 days.

On Thursday, Samoud Dhamiri al-Yameen was sworn in as the first female magistrate on the Islamic Judicial Council of Palestine.

She will join Supreme Justice Sheikh Yusef al-Da'is of the Supreme Council for Islamic Courts and Major General Adnan Dhamiri, Commissar-General and spokesman for the security establishment.

Saidata Forna is not sure of her exact age. But she was less than 15 when she was captured by rebel soldiers during Sierra Leone's civil war in the dusty town of Makeni in the centre of the country – and turned into a sex slave.

Since arriving in Cape Town five years ago, Erina Manyene (not her real name) has eked out a meagre living picking up shifts doing laundry and cleaning other people's homes in the city's leafy southern suburbs.

Vietnam is evaluated as the best performer in Southeast Asia in terms of eradicating gender gap over the past 20 years, said Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.

Female garment workers in Cambodia who have migrated to the capital are more exposed to a risk of HIV infection because of the changes in their social and economic circumstances, a new report claims. The report, published in this month's Women's Studies International Forum journal, looks at the social and economic factors that affect HIV rates among migrant Cambodian garment workers.

THIRTY-TWO year-old Chipo Banda (not her real name) has lost count of the number of times she has had to lie to explain to workmates how she periodically spots swollen eyes, scars and bruises that have become constant features on her face. None of her friends know that her disfigured face is a result of beatings from her husband for what she described as “silliest of reasons”.