To say they're excited about the downfall of the Gaddafi regime would be an understatement.From the moment Newsbeat meets them they talk about the revolution with big smiles on their faces. Even sitting at this coffee shop isn't something they could have done before.

Noor Toshani, 16, describes the situation before things changed: "We would probably do it, but we would be upstairs in the women and family area.

Within the 8-month long armed conflict against ethnic groups in Shan and Kachin States, Burma Army soldiers have raped 81 women and girls, of which 36 were killed, the Women's League of Burma (WLB) said.

Two thousand women marched through the streets of Guatemala City last week in support of the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. "Violence and impunity are still the major problems facing Guatemalan women.

On Egypt's first day of elections, women's participation was visibly large in the country's first post-revolution elections to choose “the revolution parliament.” The high female turn-out comes despite the low numbers of women who are running for the Parliament.

During a fairly frenetic trip to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last week I spent a couple of hours at the Heal Africa centre in Goma, one of several institutions in the region where victims of sexual violence are treated.

The compound was crowded. There was a lot of building work going on and the existing wards looked full.

Their `century' shouldn't be perceived as the end of men

On Sept. 21 Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff became the first woman ever to give the opening speech at UN General Assembly session. She called this ‘the century of women'.

Whatever would Aristophanes, the Greek playwright of antiquity, think of the new PBS documentary,Women, War and Peace?

If and when Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) releases its report later this month, as scheduled, it will do so amid wide scepticism on many critical fronts – except, it seems, for one. The credibility, independence and the ethnic balance of the post-war commission have been well-challenged internationally, since it was established by the President last year to ostensibly help reconcile the nation.

The UK's first ambassador to South Sudan, Alistair McPhail, has called for a focus upon tackling the country's violence against women ahead of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Friday.

Support for women and children raped and tortured during conflict will be the focus of a new foreign policy initiative, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said today.

The Government's new national action plan on women, peace and security aims to increase the number of female peacekeepers and will champion the cause of those who faced gender-based violence in war zones and developing countries.