The Fund for Gender Equality today announced grants totalling more than US$27.5 million to recipients in 13 countries, with grant amounts of up to US$3 million each. The Fund for Gender Equality, supported by donations from the Governments of Spain and Norway, is managed by the UN Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM (part of UN Women).

As part of the Global Open Day for Women and Peace, 20 women from civil society and community-based organizations in Kenya came together in Nairobi on 7 July to discuss issues related to the inclusion of women in processes of conflict resolution, peace negotiations and peacebuilding.

Liberian lawmakers were on Tuesday, July 6, urged to let ECOWAS parliamentary deliberations, taking place in Liberia, help them support a bill before them seeking greater political representation for women. The National Legislature is considering a bill which would call for 30 percent women participation in political representation.

Jean-Michel Tijerina, CEO and Founder of the Cambodia Project, insisted I must meet her.

After an hour over coffee, I fully comprehended why.

I was talking to the Cory Aquino or the Aung San Suu Kyi - of Cambodia.

And given her courageous outspokenness, I am now very concerned for her safety.

While Asia and the Pacific can take pride in the region's vibrant economic transformation in recent decades, this has not translated into progress on gender equality.

Amnesty International says rape and sexual crimes committed mainly against women and children has become a growing problem in Cambodia. To mark the 100th International Women's Day, the human-rights group Amnesty International is releasing a report on the scourge of rape and sexual violence in Cambodia.

Cambodia's new penal code, which comes into force later this year, should be accompanied by stronger law enforcement measures if the country's women and girls are to be better protected from rape, says the global rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).

"We do not have an open conflict right nowbut guns keep taking their toll within communities still today," says Josefina Sandemba, a pastor from the Evangelical Congregational Church in Angola (IECA) who was briefing a Living Letters team visiting the country on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in late July.

Scandal buffs may recall that when a UN peacekeeping mission got under way in Cambodia in the early 1990s, the number of brothels suddenly spiked. The new patrons, it turned out, were male troops. Rather than condemn their actions, the head of the mission uncouthly replied: “Boys will be boys.”

For the women's sector, nine years of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo means nine years of devastation, corruption, scandals and political repression and killings. Women's group Gabriela challenged President Benigno Aquino III to reverse it and waste no time in taking concrete measures.