Sergeant Eunice Kisembo discovered she was HIV positive in 2001 after her release from Luzira Prison.
Kisembo says during a three-and-half-year term imprisonment on allegations of aiding LRA rebels, prison warders commanded her to walk naked and one raped her.

IN 2002, women in Liberia helped bring an end to one of Africa's bloodiest wars by staging a series of peace protests — including a boycott on having sex with their husbands. In 1996, a female political party in Northern Ireland helped push for an end to sectarian violence.

Fatuma Elmi, a resettled refugee from Somalia, recently attended an international conference on the world's forcibly displaced and stateless organized the UN refugee agency.The meeting took place last month at the organization's headquarters in Geneva.

Wartime rape is a persistent and brutal aspect of conflict, whether during or in the aftermath of hostilities. In the recent warfare in Libya, as well as in most civil and international armed conflicts, women were subjected to different forms of visible and invisible violence, including sexual exploitation and abuse.

Just 15 years old, Sahar Gul has become the bruised and bloodied face of women's rights in Afghanistan. The teenage bride's eyes were swollen nearly shut as she was wheeled into the hospital seven months after her arranged marriage. Black scabs crusted her fingertips where her nails used to be.

Before we finally close the chapter on 2011, flipping a fresh page for a new beginning in 2012, let's not forget that the unresolved issues of 2011 and other past years are still in need of solutions.

Karen leaders are cautiously optimistic about the possibility of peace after more than 60 years of fighting Burmese security forces as they prepare for meetings with the government on 10 January.

Ronak Saffarzadeh is a Kurdish women's rights activist, and signatory to “One million signatures campaign for the repeal of discriminatory laws against women”.