Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer, Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls Tina Tchen, Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Rosa Brooks, and Director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force at USAID Jim Bever on June 9 participated in a State Department hosted roundtable discussion on Women in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of young Zimbabweans trying to flee their country's tough regime arrive in South Africa every day as the nation prepares for thousands of football fans to descend for the World Cup.

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General, in Liberia, Ms. Ellen Margrethe Loj yesterday interacted with Liberian Women Leaders at the Angie Brooks International Centre at the University of Liberia Fendell Campus.

The interaction was part of ceremony commemorate Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security as "Global Open Day for Women and Peace".

President Ernest Bai Koroma has in the most strongest of terms decried what he considered as the continued acts of sexual and gender-based violence being meted out on women and girls in the country.

Having seen first-hand how United Nations female peacekeepers helped her own country rebuild, Sierra Leone's highest-ranking female police officer is now hoping to duplicate those successes in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur.

There are signs of positive action to counter the culture of gender-based violence in Katanga province in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.

Perhaps the most significant step taken in recent months has been the creation of a new police unit to protect young women and girls, which was officially inaugurated in the provincial capital Lubumbashi on April 21.

The first woman to run for president of Afghanistan, Moussada Jalal, told Canadians on Tuesday that engaging the Taliban in a bid to end an eight-year-old war would set back women's rights.

Peace talks with the Taliban is "bad news for women in Afghanistan," Jalal, a former minister of women's affairs, told reporters. "I hope it doesn't happen."

Women from all over Southern Sudan gathered in the regional capital of Juba for a one-day open peace forum on 9 June to identify the priorities, concern and needs of women within the context of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325.

Roza Otunbaeva, President of the Kyrgyz Republic for the Transition Period signed up for the UN Secretary General's Campaign “UNiTE to End Violence against Women” reaffirming the commitment to make ending violence against women and girls a top priority at the state level.

The Alliance of Women's Legislative Initiatives organized in Bishkek a National Conference on "Women's Political Participation in the Constitutional Reform and Parliamentary Elections" to develop a common position of the civil society organizations on women's participation in key political reforms and processes.