(Photo Jewel Samad)

The United Nations may set up a sex abuse blacklist of countries whose peacekeepers will be banned from UN missions, a top official said after two new cases were reported in Haiti.

The United Nations' secretary-general is appealing to the world's main nuclear disarmament forum to get down to work after years of deadlock, warning it that it is "in danger of sinking."

Ban Ki-moon's message to the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament came as it held its first meeting of 2012. The body hasn't produced anything substantial since the 1996 nuclear test-ban treaty.

The epicenter of Brazilian power can be found on the fourth floor of the Palacio do Planalto in Brasília, the nation's capital. Liveried waiters elegantly carry trays of coffee through the hallways of the presidential palace, high-ranking officials wait in anterooms and air-conditioning units hum in the offices.

In an impassioned plea for peace, twenty-two women's organizations in South Korea make their case for a better world by asking for the circumvention of nuclear weapons and the closing down of power reactors in the region.

Seoul, SOUTH KOREA: We South Korean women believe nuclear weapons and power reactors are a matter of life or death. They threaten our lives, the lives of our families and all living creatures.

(Xinhua Photo)

Sierra Leone's President Bai Koroma (centre) arrives for the inaugural address of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on January 16, 2012 in Monrovia. In Freetown, a coalition of women are up against political mischief ahead of the country's elections later in the year.

We do not see the torture inflicted on one girl for trying to flee her captors, but we see the tears of her fellow slaves forced to watch. We see the iron bar tossed on to the cellar floor when the punishment is over, and we know what has happened.

The state of women in Afghanistan: Moving in the right direction, but with a long way to go.