This week's national election in Liberia came on the heels of last week's announcement that two of the three Nobel Peace Prize recipients this year are women from Liberia — current President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and peace activist Leymah Gbowee. B.

A U.N. human rights expert told the General Assembly Monday that violence against women across the world continues to be pervasive and widespread and reminded States of their obligation under international law to protect women.

The Security Council today debated the need to reform the security sector in African countries emerging from conflict, with the United Nations peacekeeping chief calling it crucial to ensuring stability, reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development.

Kenya has been voted the best country in the world for passing laws that enable women to conduct business during the last two years.

A new World Bank and International Finance Corporation report rates Kenya highly in a global survey of what governments are doing to remove barriers that stop women from conducting business.

Sexual abuse is a CRIME. Sexual assault is an attack of a sexual nature on another person or child, or any sexual act committed without the person's permission.

It is an involuntary sexual act in which a person is threaten, intimidate, or forced to engage against their will, or any sexual touching of a person who has not consented.

Liberians voted Tuesday in the country's second presidential election since the end of a brutal civil war, choosing from a roster of 16 candidates that include a Nobel laureate, a nephew of a former president, a former warlord infamous for slicing off his foe's ears and a businessman-diplomat, among others.

The pursuit of equal rights for women has been broadened in recent years with the growing recognition that the empowerment of women plays a vital role in the restoration of peace in societies divided by conflict and war. This is not a simplistic matter of men making war and women making peace, of one sex's aggressive drives being moderated by the other's supposedly gentler instincts.

If an American television network were going to be in cahoots with the Nobel committee, it makes sense that it would be PBS. How else to explain the premiere of the mini-series “Women, War & Peace” on Tuesday, just days after one of its major figures, the Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for 2011?

Following a remarkable year in the promotion of gender equality and women's empowerment that was marked by the establishment of UN-Women and the launch of the Secretary-General's Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, it was now time to turn the momentum generated in 2010 into clear, tangible gains for women and girls everywhere, the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) was told today.

In its statement to the world, the Norwegian Nobel Committee honored women warriors battling for peace and said it hoped the Peace Prize would help to ”realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.” Now comes a test of the world's resolve to achieve that potential. Afghanistan.