An aid ship transporting medical supplies to Gaza will leave Lebanon in the coming days with dozens of women activists on board, one of the organizers told AFP on Tuesday.

"We are all independent women who believe in breaking the siege on Gaza and are committed to the enmity of the Zionist entity," said Samar Hajj, who is coordinating the trip.

CWGL-Center for Women's Global Leadership-is pleased to announce the theme for the upcoming 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign (2010). The following examples of issues that the campaign can address are central to the work of many IANSA women.

These include:

A national action plan to support women in conflict is deeply flawed, slipshod and will damage Ireland's reputation internationally, a group of civil society organisations has said.

The group has claimed the National Action Plan on UN Security Council resolution 1325 is being written by two interns at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Three years ago, while Jolie Muhindo was returning from taking her exams in a city several hours away from her village, she was raped by the commander of an armed group. Since then she has been living with a host family in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, one of the most unstable parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The United Nations and civil society today said today that woman participation in decision-making levels was a must to avert violence against women in conflict and post-conflict settings and that the state should provide, without delay, the victims with adequate multi-sectoral responses and justice.

The Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Assistance to Pakistan, Jean-Maurice Ripert, met with representatives from women's peace organizations in Islamabad on 15 June, on the occasion of the Global Open Day for Women and Peace. The meeting aimed to build dialogue on the implementation in Pakistan of Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, as its 10th anniversary is coming up in October.

Some 400,000 people have been displaced by ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, the United Nations announced Thursday, dramatically increasing the official estimate of a crisis that has left throngs of desperate, fearful refugees without enough food and water in grim camps along the Uzbek border.

UNDP and the Training Research Group (TRG), a local NGO in Somaliland, have launched a project to improve the livelihoods of displaced women, with the support of the Government of Norway.

The Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Nepal, Karin Landgren, and the acting UN Resident Coordinator, Gillian Mellsop, received women peace activists at the Centre for Constitutional Dialogue in Kathmandu on 11 June, for a discussion on women's participation in the peace process in Nepal.

At a press conference held on 31 May 2010 during the Review Conference of the Rome Statute, the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice released an advocacy paper titled Advancing Gender Justice - A Call to Action.