Most African societies have patriarchal structures whereby men dominate the social, economic, and political realms of communities while women's roles are either underrepresented in these realms or discouraged due to the perceived notions of the traditional roles of men and women.

“I commend Ghana for being among the top contributors of women police officers to United Nations peacekeeping operations,” said Ann-Marie Orler, the highest ranking police official in the UN system.

It is never easy to persuade those who have acquired power forcibly of the wisdom of peaceful change," Aung San Suu Kyi once remarked. But the leader of Burma's main pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), never wavered in her belief that it was possible. Now it may actually be happening.

She had expected a job in a hotel. But when Valentina arrived here two months ago from Romania, the man who helped her get here — a man she had considered her boyfriend — made it clear that the job was on the side of the road.

They have been beaten, spat at and cursed. Jeered, mocked and ignored.

But a few dozen women dressed in black regularly stand silently on Belgrade's main streets. They hold signs demanding an end to war, advocating human rights or reminding people of the bloody ethnic clashes in the former Yugoslavia that Serbia itself had triggered in the 1990s.

They are the Women in Black.

Isabel* thinks she's finally found a place where she can rebuild her life, seven years after fleeing her home and moving from one location to another in search of safety.

A U.S.-based group of physicians on Tuesday released medical evidence of widespread torture, sexual assault and other human rights violations against civilians in Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region.

The study was released by the group Physicians for Human Rights in the peer-reviewed Internet medical journal, PLoS Medicine.

Opposition to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has some who advocate for victims of domestic abuse scratching their heads.

Last week, a young woman from the Karen ethnic minority in Burma reported being “beaten, drugged, and sexually assaulted by two men wearing army fatigues.” In November 2011, reports emerged that four women were being kept as sex slaves by the Burmese military near the Kachin-China border; forced to cook and clean during the day and gang-raped at night by the soldiers in the Light Infantry Battalion 321.

Over the course of a decade and through the administrations of two presidents of different political parties, the United States has maintained a consistent commitment to support the women of Afghanistan through the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council (USAWC).