NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently said that greater empowerment and more effective protection of women against the dangers of armed conflicts benefits everyone, not only women. This 8 March, NATO is marking International Women's Day by bringing prominent NATO women ‘back to school' to encourage more future female leaders to take part in building peace and security.

The work of the UN-INSTRAW/CAWTAR project “Strengthening women's leadership and women's participation in political life and decision making processes in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia” progresses with the organization of various activities.

The Iranian judiciary should immediately halt plans to execute Zeynab Jalalian and other Kurdish dissidents, Human Rights Watch said today. Jalalian is one of 17 such dissidents currently on death row in Iranian prisons.

People around the world say they firmly support equal rights for men and women, but many still believe men should get preference when it comes to good jobs, higher education or even in some cases the simple right to work outside the home, according to a new survey of 22 nations.

The Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) Campaign celebrates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, agreed to on 30 June and to be formally adopted by the General Assembly on Friday, 2 July, to establish “UN Women”—the new gender equality entity at the UN.

The 200,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared of Algeria's long civil war were almost all men. They left behind a generation of women from different backgrounds and political opinions who have come together in opposition to the president's charter for peace and reconciliation.

From peacekeepers in Darfur escorting women and girls to prevent “firewood rapes” to blue helmets in Kosovo setting up an emergency hotline for at-risk communities and lone women, the United Nations launched today its first compilation of the best practices of its staff to prevent, deter and respond to the use of rape as a war tactic.

With its emphasis on gender equality, the South African constitution is regarded as a great example for many other developing countries. Yet, despite laws intended to protect the rights of women like the Sexual Abuse Act and the Domestic Violence Act, women in the country still suffer indignities at the hands of police and in court.

There is a slow process within human rights organisations that started twenty years ago: it aims at fully incorporating women's rights within their mandate. Hence, domestic violence, committed by non-state actors, is now taken into account. But there is one area that urgently needs to be addressed: when the perpetrators of violations are political non-state actors that attack women's human rights defenders.