Farida Tarana defied age-old Afghan tradition, death threats and sexual discrimination to become a pop star and later the public face of post-Taliban women's politics.

Now a local legislator, she is a prominent example of the progress Afghan women have made since the 2001 overthrow of the radical Islamist regime that barred them from education and working outside their homes.

Nearly ten years after the adoption by the UN Security Council of its groundbreaking resolution on Women, Peace and Security, known as resolution 1325, women are still not sufficiently represented in peace negotiations. At last week's conference on Afghanistan in London only one Afghan woman was scheduled to speak, co-presenting with a man the concerns of Afghan civil society.

More than three million Iraqi men have been killed in the Iraq War since 2003, leaving behind nearly 740,000 widows and an inestimable number of children. When suddenly left without a husband, newly widowed women have few resources and very little idea of what to do next.

Any agreement between the Afghan Government and the Taliban should include a clear commitment to protect women's human rights, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women said today.

This blog is written by Najwa Mekki, Communications Officer for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa. From 22-28 January she visited Yemen and made a trip to Amran to meet some of the women and children displaced by conflict in the country's troubled north.

Rape victims in the south east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, can usually be paid off with five goats and some money to forget an act. This is why, in a six month drive to re-shape attitudes towards the crime, United Nations staff are telling women they can go to court. One of the stops on the campaigns tour is the village of Mwitwobe in Katanga province.

Sexual violence used as a weapon of war in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo continues unabated as more than a decade of conflict in the area drags on. This week the world has again turned its eyes to this ongoing issue, as new figures released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) stated that over 8,000 women were raped in the region in 2009.

A training session for Congolese Special Police for Protection of Women and Children is being held from February 9, to February 19, 2010 by MONUC's (the UN Peacekeeping Mission in the DRC) Police component in Kananga in collaboration with UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund).

I've learned some new words.

One is “autocannibalism,” coined in French but equally appropriate in English. It describes what happens when a militia here in eastern Congo's endless war cuts flesh from living victims and forces them to eat it.