The United Nations has urged action to prevent wanton sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo where some 150 women and baby boys were recently raped by rebel soldiers belonging to Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), reports said on Thursday.

Continuing high rates of maternal mortality and persistent gender-based violence must be addressed through a holistic and rights-based approach that strengthens health systems and empowers women. As we approach the ten-year review of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in September, we have an extraordinary model of leadership to look to in Sierra Leone of how such approaches can be implemented in practice.

The bloody wake left by the Mavi Marmara after the May 31 Israeli commando raid has not deterred 50 female activists from trying to break the four-year-old siege of Gaza. To hear Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak speak of their planned relief effort, one would think the very existence of Israel was at stake.

Pulling Western troops out of Afghanistan will condemn mothers and children to suffer, a leading Afghan women's advocate has warned.

Sakena Yacoobi said yesterday that foreign soldiers - including from Australia - were needed for at least another five years in a conflict where extremists deliberately poison the drinking water at schools to scare away children.

The small classroom is abuzz with conversations in Persian. But it ends as soon as a young woman in salwar-kameez enters and starts teaching English. Meet Aarzoo Hussain, an Afghan national, who is fiercely independent and wants womenfolk from her country to lead a free life too. Hussain is happy that her family chose to come to India and she is away from the land of “tyranny and subjugation”.

Ten campaign workers for a female parliamentary candidate in western Afghanistan were abducted by gunmen Thursday and the Taliban claimed responsibility for two deadly attacks, one that killed eight Afghan police officers and another that killed two Spanish police trainers and a translator a day earlier.

When Rose Gottemoeller began negotiating the new nuclear treaty with Moscow, the U.S. diplomat got questions on the usual topics: missile defense, warheads, inspections.

And then there was this one from the Russian generals: "How come you've got so many women?"

(Washington, D.C.) Amnesty International is urging the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina to reject a draft law, prohibiting wearing in public, clothes which prevent identification which is set for debate tomorrow.

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, affirmed that the efforts to modernize and strengthen the mechanisms directed to the elimination of violence against women continue to be a priority. He did so in San José, Costa Rica, in the context of the OAS's fight for the promotion and defense of human rights.

In honor of Thursday's anniversary of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote in the United States of America, here are some facts on women and politics.

The U.S. ranked 73rd in the world for women's representation in the national parliament/legislature out of the 186 countries evaluated.

Women constituted 16.8% of the U.S. House of Representatives and 15.3% of the U.S. Senate.