The quake claimed the lives of Haiti's best-known feminist activists. How the rebuilding efforts should advance gender equality—and honor their memories.

A nation of just over 2 million people in the Balkan Peninsula in Southeastern Europe, Macedonia has experienced much turbulence since declaring independence from (the former) Yugoslavia in 1991 and a civil war in 2001. Now, nearly a decade later, the country seeks membership in the European Union, faces the growing influence of religious groups, and struggles with the economic crisis that has wreaked havoc worldwide.

Hundreds of security forces have been deployed in the Kurdish town of Chamchamal after a wave of unsolved murders moved residents to demand government intervention.

Locals claim a bloody tribal vendetta has spilled onto the streets, making revenge killings and rapes a common occurrence in this community some 20 kilometres from the disputed town of Kirkuk.

There has been some return to normality in Pakistan's troubled Swat District since the army's military campaign in the area, but fear of Taliban militants persists and is affecting people's - especially women's - lives.

"Sacan Sus Rosarios De Nuestras Ovarios!" The women, some of them bare-breasted, linked arms and chanted at the men in suits who were dashing towards the barricaded doors of the colonial edifice that houses the local congress in the central Mexican city of Queretero.

Cases of gender-based sexual violence are higher in the Great Lakes region than any other part of the world, regional security officials have disclosed.

The disclosure was made on Wednesday during a security meeting of officials from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, Angola and Zambia in Kampala.

In some ways, the problem is pure maths. During the 11-year Nepalese civil war, which ended three years ago with the overthrow by Maoist guerrillas of the country's monarchy, about 40 per cent of the 19,000 Maoist cadres were women. The peace agreement stipulated that the fighters would be integrated into the 100,000-strong national army – only 2 per cent of which is female, with most of the women in clerical and nursing posts.

‘Give peace a chance' may just be another cliché for many, but for women who have suffered the ravages of war, endless strife and other forms of conflict, joining hands to find meaningful solutions to their collective aspiration lends it a whole new meaning.

When Kusum Lata, 40, decided to run for election in her village, she felt frightened. "I was extremely nervous as everything was new to me," says the mother of four. But the support of her family and friends inspired her.

She has not looked back since becoming a ‘sarpanch' (head of village-level government) of Gairsain village in Chamoli district in the picturesque mountain state of Uttarakhand.