Fiji, a multi-racial, multi-cultural country of 300 islands in the South Pacific, has undergone another coup - the fourth in 22 years. The women of Fiji want their voices to be heard as they work on ways to bring peace back to their country, and they are asking for the United Nations to support their efforts.

Angola's experience of gender participation in politics and decision making organs was praised at the meeting of the Network of Women MPs of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) held on June 14 and 15 in Sao Tome and Principe.

Counseling a rape victim more than 40 years ago, Dr. Sonnet Ehlers got an idea for an anti-rape female condom that South Africa is now testing during the mostly male and sometimes raucous, alcohol-fueled celebrations for the World Cup.

Many South African men do not respect the constitutionally conferred rights of women citizens. Every year thousands of women are raped in South Africa - one every seven seconds, an average of 1,300 every day.(2) These frightening statistics suggest that rape is a part of a culture of violence in which acts such as rape have become normative in the lives of many men and women.

Suffering through the atrocities of war affects people in different ways. Some become crippled by anger, others by fear. Some become violent and want only revenge. And some, like Rose Mapendo, an inspiring survivor of the war and ethnic cleansing in the Democratic Republic of Congo, come out with a strong commitment to work for peace and reconciliation.

Women who were raped by "security personnel" during the insurgency period have demanded that the government provide them compensation, state-owned news agency RSS reported Tuesday. They put forth the demand before the local Peace Committee which was collecting the details of conflict victims.

The list of what needs to be fixed in Haiti is distressingly long, and progress has been frustratingly slow. But two areas require urgent attention from the Haitian government and its main international backers, the United Nations and the United States:

UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie has returned to northern Ecuador to see how the situation has changed since she was last in the country eight years ago and to raise awareness about unaccompanied minors and violence against female refugees.

The struggle for human rights and gender equality continues in Iran as we mark the one-year anniversary of the demonstrations against the rigged elections. On June 12, 2009, the Iranian people took to the streets in droves to protest the fraudulent elections that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency. The Iranian regime resorted to extreme violence against these peaceful demonstrations.

Police records in Sierra Leone show that after months of court appearances, Janice*, 35, dropped charges against the four men she said gang-raped her and then filled her vagina with sand. This is one of nearly 1,000 cases of sexual assault filed in 2009 in which the perpetrators were never punished.