With the focus of local and international media on Kenya's ability to maintain peace and stability, improvements in women's political participation were an unsung success story of the country's national elections, held earlier this month.

This year's World Social Forum, a transnational gathering of social activists, took place in Tunis, a city bubbling with unrest as it struggles to shake off a legacy of authoritarian rule while navigating tensions over women's rights, labor and nationalism. At the gates of the gathering last week, these faultlines became starkly apparent when a caravan of trade unionists and rights advocates found themselves unexpectedly blockaded.

Another Islamic cleric has gone public to announce a fatwa that permits US-backed FSA rebels to rape non-Sunni women in Syria as part of a “sexual jihad” that has seen girls as young as 14 transported into the country to service the needs of anti-Assad militants.

The ultra-Orthodox rabbi in charge of the sacred Western Wall assured a government emissary on Thursday (April 4) that Jewish women will not be arrested if they try to recite the mourner's prayer at the holy site, despite a warning from Israeli police.

The first thing Syrian-American activist Rania Kisar does when she crosses the border into Syria, is go shopping.

As the founder of the Women's Revolution Committee, she's doing what international aid organizations are afraid to do; traveling deep into the hardest-hit parts of war-torn Syria to deliver desperately needed food supplies.

PRESIDENT-elect Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto want to have at least one woman from each of Kenya's eight province appointed to the Cabinet to meet the 30 per cent constitutional gender requirement.

State house political adviser Nancy Gitau, earlier touted for the Head of Civil Service, is now being considered for appointment as a Cabinet secretary. Nancy was at the top of the hierarchy in Uhuru's presidential campaign.

At least 13 Tunisian girls reportedly travelled to rebel-held Northern Syria to offer themselves as sex workers to opposition fighters.

The report comes as concerns in Tunisia grow about religious orders or 'fatwas' that have circulated the internet calling on women to perform jihad through sex.

Three Indian brothers, Ravi, Rishi, and Nishi Kant have received the prestigious Vital Voices Global leadership award from Vice President Joe Biden in the US. The award recognises their effort to end violence against women and was presented to them at Vital Voices' annual ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. earlier this week.

A Montenegrin warlord was jailed for 45 years on Friday for the murder, rape and torture of non-Serb civilians in Sarajevo in the Bosnian war, receiving the longest sentence handed down so far by the Bosnian war crimes court.

Somalia's new government has to build a stronger and more transparent judicial system in order to prosecute perpetrators of sexual violence against women, according to a senior United Nations official. The call comes as Somali government officials, judges and diplomats deliberate on how to enhance the country's judiciary.