The United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office has joined forces with a network of over a dozen other UN entities to prevent sexual violence in armed conflict and respond effectively to the needs of survivors.

Special envoy reminds of urgent need for European emergency call number for victims of violence.

What conceptions of gender underlie military policy towards sexual violence? Is the specific form the violence takes determined by the type of warfare? To what extent is sexual violence in wartime different to that in peacetime? And what does a closer examination of homosexual violence add to our understanding? A roundtable discussion organized by the Hamburg Institute of Social Research.

Women Thrive Worldwide applauds the introduction today of the bipartisan International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA), in both Houses of the 111th Congress. This groundbreaking bill addresses for the first time the global crisis of violence against women and girls, and would apply the force of U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance toward preventing such abuse, which is estimated to affect one in three women and girls worldwide.

Against the backdrop of continued widespread gender discrimination worldwide, the European Union (EU) has urged Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to "urgently" speed up the creation of the proposed new U.N. agency for women.

In 2008, the United Nations unanimously adopted Resolution 1820 which calls for the, “immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians”. Acknowledging that sexual violence is most often targeted at women and girls, the UN pledged to promote gender equality as a main component of their future peacebuilding endeavors.

US lawmakers introduced landmark legislation Thursday to make combatting violence against women and girls worldwide -- notably in places like Haiti and Afghanistan -- central to US foreign policy.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today launched an appeal for $1.2 billion to help provide life-saving emergency support to women and children impacted by the most severe humanitarian crises around the world, including the Haitian earthquake.

ABANTU for Development with support from the Global Fund for Women (GFW) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is organizing a four-day methodology workshop under the theme "Strengthening Women's Activism in Post-Conflict Africa" in Accra for international and locally based researchers and activists from Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana.

Fifteen years after the signature of the Beijing Platform for Action, women representing European governments and civil society organizations met last week in Cadiz, Spain, to assess progress made and point out new challenges on the way to gender equality. UNIFEM highlighted the need for accountability for action on commitments made by governments at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.