Back in Najaf, Iraq, Khayzaran and her family lived in a well-kept house. They had two cars and a small orchard. Her children, two girls and three boys, attended school and came home to modest feasts.

Seven women affected by Congo-Brazzaville's (also known as Republic of Congo) civil wars between 1997 and 2003 came together in November 2009 for a four-day digital storytelling workshop organized in a partnership between the United Nations Development Programme Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (UNDP-BCPR) and the Center for Digital Storytelling's initiative Silence Speaks.

The testimonies of women who survived sexual violence during post-election conflict in 2008 should be heard, say advocates. The magnitude of the crimes committed against women because of their gender must be recorded and prosecuted to prevent such violence from occurring again.

Two women peace campaigners have expressed their shock at being refused a stand at a flagship Wiltshire British Armed Forces and Veterans Celebration in Trowbridge this summer.

The organisers of the family event, being held in Trowbridge Park on June 27, told them their presence could be inflammatory.

The latest flurry of attention toward gays in the military shows that the question of who gets to be a soldier, and why, is sometimes unavoidably moral. So let's ask that question about another group of soldiers who haven't attracted as much talk but should: mothers, many of them single, in combat boots -- and combat zones.

Margot Wallström's two-year U.N. assignment to stem sexual violence in conflict areas begins March 1, with an immediate focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the first part of my research-based article on titled 'Iran: Clerics or pimps', readers must have already learnt about the latest status of women in that country, which is under the totalitarian role of Muslim fanatics, who virtually are turning the country into a hell.

The vicious, McCarthyite attack on the New Israel Fund (Nif), which uses philanthropic funds to foster and support Israeli non-profit, civil society organisations, did not come out of the blue.

Fifteen years ago 30,000 women gathered in Huairou, Beijing, and over two weeks held 3,500 workshops and worked with UN member states to produce a vision of global social transformation - the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA).