Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalithaa Jayaraman and Mamata Bannerjee will be some of the most influential women in India after the elections. But women are still underrepresented and the criminalization of politics in the country is highlighted as a deterrent to women's participation.

In 2002, Gujarat was the site of one of the worst communal riots in India's history, with tensions between majority and minority communities continuing to simmer long after the immediate violence. Complicity of the state in the violence and systematic hate campaigns against the minority community were so blatant that commentators often use the term 'pogrom' to describe the events of those stormy days.

In a country known as the most dangerous in the world to be female, the most unusual aspect of the story of convicted rapist Eleka Amungu is that he is behind bars.

UPA government, in its new beginning, reaffirmed its commitment to women's empowerment by promising not just early passage of the contentious women's reservation bill but also replication of Bihar's landmark measure to reserve 50% of seats in panchayats and urban local bodies for members of the fairer sex.

It was a historic moment for the United Nations when, 10 years ago, the Security Council unanimously recognised "the intrinsic role of women in global peace and security" through Resolution 1325, said Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh at a panel at the U.N. Thursday on the continuing obstacles to its implementation.

More than a thousand Nepalese women married to Bhutanese refugees fear they may be left out of the third country resettlement programme and end up separated from their families.

The health problems faced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the over 20 camps in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) are being made worse by a combination of lack of funds, a lack of women doctors and cultural constraints which dictate that it is not appropriate for male doctors to tend to women or girls.

Walson Teron, 51, who belongs to the Karbi tribe and lived in Langmili village in the Karbi Anglong Hills District of Assam, has gone through many a nightmare. But the worst was when his 12-year-old daughter, Prativa, was gang-raped in October 2003. Teron had to carry her on his back across a 14-kilometre-long hilly route to the district headquarters of Diphu to get medical assistance.

Widows in Nepal are protesting against a decision by the Nepalese government to offer a cash incentive to men for marrying them.

The incentive was announced in the government's annual budget earlier this week - it is a lump sum of 50,000 Nepali rupees ($641).

Nepal has a large number of widows because of the bloody conflict there in recent years as well as the high rates of HIV and other diseases found in the country.