Rwandan women from the agriculture sector will benefit from a United Nations Programme to enhance the participation of women in good governance and access to services.

A woman took position alongside male soldiers at the graveside of a fallen colleague. She positioned her AK47 on her shoulder, and on command fired into the grey sky with the others.

Mariatu Sesay became at that moment the first woman in the Sierra Leone army to take part in a 21-gun salute to honour a dead soldier.

Tackling systemic conflict and sexual violence like the atrocities on the Congo requires a comprehensive role in peacekeeping operations, world leaders said.

World leaders discussed global peacekeeping operations on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly under way at U.N. headquarters this week.

Latin America is no stranger to female leaders, but not many can match the radical political trajectory of Dilma Rousseff, the 62-year-old onetime Marxist guerrilla leader who stands to become Brazil's first female president.

We ran a story yesterday about the increasing number of rape and defilement cases in Nyagatare District. According to the district's Intermediate Court, on average, 45 out of 50 cases handled by the court, in a month, are related to sexual abuse with most of the victims, children under 14.

The culture of impunity, atrocities and violence against civilians and the plundering of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo must come to an end, MEPs said in a debate on Wednesday, 22 September. Parliament held discussions in light of a recent UN draft report (to be made public on 1 October) that documents the worst human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 1993 and 2003.

The head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today voiced deep concern over continuing violence in the eastern province of North Kivu, where the Government is investigating a series of recent killings.

The European Union (EU) urged the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Wednesday to ramp up efforts to protect the population and end the impunity of sexual predators following recent mass rapes.

"The EU is worried about the human rights situation in the DRC," said Belgian European Affairs Minister Olivier Chastel, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

"I'm going to do everything possible to raise my daughter. My daughter is my future. And I can see my future in her," says Mirlene Saint Juste, a rice merchant in the Opoto market of Gonaives in northern Haiti.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson and other senior U.S. government officials told representatives of Zimbabwe's transitional government at a meeting at the United Nations that they should speak out against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, observe international standards of human rights and continue to make political progress that will sustain much-needed economic growth.