On 3 August 2009, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile signed the National Action Plan to implement the United Nations Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, making Chile the first Latin American country to do so. Security Council Resolution 1325 calls for women to be fully involved in peace and security missions throughout the world and mandates the use of a gendered perspective on peacekeeping, reconstruction, and armed conflict.

Improving the status and effectiveness of women, whose numbers have risen steadily in the past decade, in the police force of the Côte d'Ivoire is the subject of a new training course organized by the United Nations mission known as UNOCI in the West African country.

In the midst of a women's human rights mission to Honduras, August 17-21, Carrie Wilson of JASS interviewed Lidize, a young Honduran member of Feminists in Resistance. This alliance of feminists and women's organizations is actively resisting the coup of June 28 and demanding a return to democratic institutions.

The Government of Liberia today launched a United Nations-backed national action plan aimed at furthering gender equality, sustainable peace and security in the only African nation with a democratically elected female head of State.

More than 400 high-profile women, including two heads of state, pressed for equal rights for half the world's population as they gathered in Liberia on Saturday on the eve of International Women's Day.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first female head of state, saluted the distinguished gathering of political and business leaders, saying: "You motivate us, you inspire us, you encourage us to continue."

For the first time in a post-conflict country, national governmental institutions, the United Nations, and civil society organizations have worked together to build an inclusive policy document for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. On International Women's Day 2009, the Government of the Republic of Liberia, headed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, launches its national action plan on women, peace and security.

In Kailahun, Sierra Leone, the poorest region in the world's poorest country, women are trying to effect change on the issues that matter to them – maternal mortality, girls' education, teenage pregnancy, literacy rates for women – by entering political office.

As the world celebrated International Women's Day on March 8, one gathering in particular testified to the resilience of the human spirit.

Two powerful forces have swept through Honduras since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya: one magnificent, the other truly horrible. The first is the resistance movement that rose up to contest the coup, surprising everyone in its breadth, nonviolence and resilience. The second is the new regime's brutal repression in response.

For three days and nights 28-year-old Comfort Wilson rode in the back of a pickup truck from her rural village in Liberia to the capital, Monrovia. She came with 30 women from her village sleeping in the truck bed, eating food they prepared at home.