“We were together in the forest when the fighting forced us to flee,” Mukakarimba said in tears, cradling her little boy to protect him from the lashing rain in this transit camp close to the Congolese border.

She was separated from her husband and a second child in the chaos sparked by the fighting between soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo's army and mutineers – who were until recently rebel soldiers.

The video that accompanies this story can be found here.

Buoyed by the winds of change sweeping the region, Libyan women are eyeing a far greater role for themselves after next month's national assembly elections.

With the US and NATO planning the departure of their forces from Afghanistan by December 2014, some Afghan women and international rights advocates are growing increasingly concerned that a decade-long focus on expanding Afghan women's rights will go with them.

Colombia must increase its efforts to fight impunity for crimes of sexual violence, a United Nations envoy said today, adding that such efforts should be paired with assistance to survivors and victims.

As the United States convenes the NATO summit in Chicago this weekend, the fate of Afghanistan's women is on my mind. This spring marks the 10th anniversary of the return of Afghanistan's girls to the classroom. During the Taliban era, women were denied education. Women could not work, even when they were the sole providers for their families. Under the Taliban dictatorship, it was decreed that women should be neither seen nor heard.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) in collaboration with several civil organizations has ended a week-long sensitization campaign on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) in the Borough of New Kru Town on the Bushrod Island, outside Monrovia. The week-long campaign, which was climaxed at the D. Tweh Sports Pitch on Saturday, May 19, 2012, was occasioned by live stage performances of drama, culture, comedy and music.

After Egyptian women stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak, many looked forward to a role in the revolution's next steps. But 15 months later, as Egyptians prepare to vote for a new president this week, rights activists complain that women are being excluded from key decisions.

“There is need to provide more information about how individuals and organisations can know more about the UN Commission on the Status of Women, as well as participate in the local processes leading to it,” said Lucy Mazingi, director of the Youth Empowerment Trust.

"It is now more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern wars." These words were spoken by Major General Patrick Cammaert, the Deputy Force Commander of the United Nations Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2008, as he described the the terrifying scorched earth rape strategy being employed in that country (and others like it).

The Domestic Violence Bill was first introduced in Pakistan's National Assembly in 2006 by a woman member of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), Sherry Rehman, currently Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States. At the time, the leader of the PPP, the late Benazir Bhutto, was in political exile and the party served as the main opposition under General Musharraf's government.