After being ridiculed by male villagers for wanting to occupy political office, Zarifa Qazizadah, the mother of 15 children, managed to become the mayor of Naw Abad, a village in the northern Balkh province.

Qazizadah's political ambition started in 2004 when she told her mocking fellow villagers that she wanted to represent them and promised to supply Naw Abad with electricity.

Last week, on Thursday, September 6, Sandra Ramírez filed into Havana‘s convention palace with five of her FARC comrades and seated herself at the table in front of a packed auditorium. The FARC had convened a press conference to discuss Colombia‘s incipient peace process.

Ruth Achieng, one of 40 HIV-positive women planning to sue the Kenyan government for forced or coerced sterilisation, knew nothing about her operation until it was too late.

Achieng's neighbours carried her to Nairobi's Kenyatta National Hospital after she started bleeding profusely. She was having a miscarriage.

“I bled until I didn't know where I was. I lost my mind,” she said.

Melanne Verveer, Ambassador at Large for Global Women's Issues, will travel to Belgium on September 17 - 18, 2012, to discuss progress in integrating women into peace and security efforts through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). She will travel with William Lietzau, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Rule of Law and Detainee Policy, who serves as the Department of Defense's lead implementer of the U.S.

On September 5, The Nation's front-page headline read "Asian Peace Council is born".

But looking at the picture of prominent former politicians and "statesmen", we might ask ourselves who gave birth to this council. There was a complete absence of women at the delivery.

African Union (AU) leaders committed to the gender parity principle in July 2002 at the first session of the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government. Ten years since then, the African Court on Human and People' rights – a continental court for the protection of human rights in Africa – is yet to obtain gender parity in the membership of judges of the Court.

2011 Nobel peace prize was given jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, Tawakkol Karman, a democratic activist and Lemah Gbowee , peace activist for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and women's rights by peace-building work.

Sending a strong message in support of ‘peace among nations,' ten Nobel Peace Prize Laureates have spoken out against a new U.S. reality television show produced by NBC that premiered on Monday night in front of 5.1 million viewers. The show called “Stars Earn Stripes” hosted by retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, brings celebrities like Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street, as well as the husband of former U.S.

This was stated by participants of a workshop here on Monday.

They said Pakistanis were more involved in forced marriages as compared to people of other Muslim countries. Even in Europe, member of the Pakistani community force their daughters to marry a man of their choice, creating embarrassment for the community.

Although gender-responsive budgeting has led to the growth of separate programmes and micro-projects for women, this project takes a more inclusive approach. The five-year plan will ensure that, across government agencies, gender gaps and inequality in policies, plans, programmes and budgets are broadly addressed and modified.