The lack of women's economic and political participation, and lack of women's education, kept Arab countries from developing properly, said US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer on the sidelines of the Women's Forum in Deauville, France. Then came the Arab Spring and “women were shoulder-to-shoulder with men in the revolutions.”

A 22-year-old Somali woman who says she was forced to flee her home country after being threatened by the al-Shabaab militant group for refusing to wear a burqa, has taken the Home Affairs minister and refugee officials to the Western Cape High Court in a bid to secure refugee status and asylum.

The woman, Naemo Gaal, says that if she is deported to Somalia, there is a risk that she would be persecuted.

Time has passed, but justice has not moved forward.

Between 1992 and 1995, tens of thousands of women were raped during the Bosnian and Herzegovina War. Some women faced daily assaults and were held captive for weeks or months.

For the rest of their lives these survivors have little hope of escaping their pains as justice crawls at such a snail's pace it might as well stand still.

An innovative online research tool just launched by Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) will provide practitioners, researchers, students and advocates with a wide range of information on women, peace and security.

The online repository can be accessed via http://iwpsd.georgetown.edu/repository.

It was stressed that representation of women in Parliament and the Senate must be between 33 and 50 per cent.

This was stated by speakers at a two-day long annual conference on the International Day of Rural Women, organised by Potohar Organisation for Development Advocacy (Poda).

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma waved an African Union flag, tapped a wooden gavel and became the first woman to take office as the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) at the A.U. headquarters in Addis Ababa on Monday.

"I have been always interested in helicopters and planes," Matic said. "I have been always interested in this adrenalin-charged and also very noble work, because we help people and we take part in defending the peace and the stability of the country."

The first part of the report focuses on ‘'the impact of wartime sexual violence on adults, as well as children, and details some surprising revelations about the impact of war on educational systems,'' states the report.

The Equal power – Lasting Peace conference gathered more than 100 participants, EU and NATO officials and politicians, as well as civil society representatives – in the audience and among the panelists.

The opinions and discussions at the conference were many, all of them though sharing a common stand: something has to be done to increase women's participation in peace negotiations. The question is how and by whom.

Hundreds of Kenyan girls, including some as young as three years old, filed a petition in the High Court on Thursday to try to force the police to investigate and prosecute rape cases they say have been ignored.

The group of more than 240 girls accuse police of demanding bribes to investigate rape, refusing to record rapes unless the victims produced witnesses, and claiming victims had consented.