Libyan political activist Amal al-Taher el-Haj has submitted her name to the General National Congress as a candidate to succeed Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, if he receives a vote of no confidence from parliament this week.

El-Haj, 45, was born in Tripoli, where she is commonly known as “Mimi.” In an interview with Al Arabiya News Channel, she expressed her hopes of being Libya's new prime minister.

Reporters Without Borders is extremely concerned about the anonymous threats that Noorul Wahab, a journalist who covers the districts of Charsadda and Mardan in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the Daily Express newspaper, has been getting for the past two days.

Egyptians were voting in a referendum on the country's draft constitution on Tuesday and Wednesday, a document that would enshrine unprecedented gender equality for women.
Since the so-called Arab Spring shook Egypt and the region to its foundations in 2010, the roles and rights of women in the Middle East's most populous country have been under the spotlight.

The voice of Syrian women must be heard in all efforts to resolve the civil war that is tearing their country apart, a United Nations-sponsored conference declared today, stressing that women's participation is vital in shaping a peaceful future for the strife-wracked Middle Eastern nation.

Certain extremist armed opposition groups are imposing strict and discriminatory rules on women and girls that have no basis in Syrian law, Human Rights Watch said today. The harsh rules that some groups are administering in areas under their control in northern and northeastern Syria violate women's and girls' human rights and limit their ability to carry out essential daily activities.

A Danish woman was held at knife point, beaten and gang-raped in the centre of New Delhi's backpacker district after she asked a group of young men for directions back to her hotel.

There is some indication that the rates of physical violence against women have reduced since the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre's survey in 1999.

This conclusion was reached following a recent survey held by the centre in 2011.

Military helicopters buzzed overhead and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police were deployed as Egyptians voted Tuesday on a new constitution in a referendum that will pave the way for a likely presidential run by the nation's top general months after he ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

Banned under strict refugee laws from applying for asylum from within her own country's borders, the former member of parliament Noorzia Atmar had no choice but to flee.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has called upon Liberia's female lawyers, gender advocates and civil society to "think out of the box" and come up with suggestions on how to address the growing crime of rape of young girls in the country.