The UN says militant Islamist group Isis has ordered all women and girls in Mosul, northern Iraq, to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM).

UN official Jacqueline Badcock said the fatwa, or religious edict, applied to females between the ages of 11 and 46.

She said the unprecedented decree issued by the Islamists in control of the city was of grave concern.

The adoption of the first-ever resolution on women human rights defenders by the United Nations General Assembly's Third Committee is a step forward in protecting those who face risks and attacks for their work to promote human rights, including women's rights, Amnesty International (AI), the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), and JASS (Just Associates) said today.

The program of listening to problems facing women in the rural areas, opened this year by the government, indicates the promotion of human rights in the country.

This was said by the State secretary of Justice and Human Rights, António Bento Bembe, while speaking on Monday to journalists in central Huambo province, where he started a three-day visit in order to assess the functioning of the sector.

A United Nations independent expert today called on the world body's General Assembly, as well as civil society, to take action against Israeli and international businesses that are profiting from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The aspirations to achieve peace and reconciliation in Colombia were at the center of proposals in three regional forums on the situation of the victims of the armed conflict that has affected that South American nation for the past five decades.

U.N. Human Rights experts are expressing concern about the widespread violence and discrimination to which women in conflict-ridden Central African Republic and Syria are subjected. C.A.R. and Syria are two of eight countries examined by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which monitors States Compliance to existing rules.

NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)-- From Iraq to Syria to the Gaza Strip, Arab women are paying a heavy price for violence flaring across the region.

More women should play instrumental roles in determining the country's defense and diplomatic policies, MKs said at a joint meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women.

The appointment of a presidential adviser on conflict-related sexual violence and child recruitment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) marks “a new dawn” in tackling these scourges, senior United Nations officials said today.

A court in Egypt has sentenced seven men to life in prison and two others to 20 years for sexual assaulting women last month.

The women were attacked in Cairo during celebrations following the election of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

Afterwards, Mr Sisi ordered officials to enforce a new law making sexual assault a crime for the first time.