While medical and psychological care are being provided to survivors of sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where 7,000 women and girls have been raped this year alone, UN and aid workers on the ground say the funding response has been too narrow, leaving key issues inadequately addressed.

Last summer, news in the United States that Jaycee Dugard had been kept in captivity in Antioch, Calif., for 18 years and raped by her captor until her Aug. 28 rescue was widely considered shocking.

Provincial authorities, community elders and women in Dai Kundi province met recently to discuss how to promote women participation in the civil service.

‘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.

Scores of former Maoist combatants, including women, were released from UN supervised camps today in Nepal's Chitwan district in the second phase of the process to rehabilitate the disqualified guerrillas as part of the 2006 peace process.

Over three decades ago a 14-year-old girl, her sister and a group of young teenagers from Bukwo headed to the River Amana for a ceremony that would change their lives forever.

Since her childhood, Gertrude Chebet had been told of the day she would become a woman. She was led to believe it would be a great moment of change and it was something to look forward to with much joy.

Finally the National Assembly passed the Protection Against Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2009 after the Criminal Law Amendment Bill was adopted by the Senate. The latter was part of the comprehensive bill passed by the National Assembly on workplace harassment and had been passed there in November 2009 but due to the opposition of the religious parties in the Senate, it faced some delay.

As a political activist and president of the women's wing of the Awami National Party (ANP), Zahira Khattak has been working relentlessly for the empowerment of women in the war-torn North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan. She believes that by empowering them, they can contribute more to the peace efforts in the region.

Activists have spent decades trying to get new laws passed to secure the rights of Ugandan women in the private sphere. As a fresh set of gender-related laws comes before parliament, activists are this time seeking to enlist male legislators as partners in advocating their passage.

The military coup d'état in Honduras on June 28 has seriously eroded democratic institutions and hard-fought gains in women's human rights and human rights in general.