Summary by Amanda Barrow, PeaceWomen Intern.

Although incidents of violence in Syria have been mounting since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime in March 2011, the atrocities occurring in the town of El-Houleh on 25 May 2012 and in the province of Hama on 6 June 2012 have prompted heightened international attention to the situation.

The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security has released the June 2012 version of their Monthly Action Points (MAP) on Women, Peace and Security for the UN Security Council.

The Whistleblower Campaign has begun a 21 Questions discussion on the Facebook page.
This is a prelude to the campaign launch in June, and the idea is to engage, educate and build an online audience for future campaign activities.

Once again states parties, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations are meeting to start the review cycle of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Reaching Critical Will (RCW) has been in Vienna for the past two weeks coordinating the NGO presence and producing the NPT News in Review, a daily publication that reports on both the NPT plenary sessions and side events.

Check out PeaceWomen/WILPF's newest addition to our website, the SCR 1325 National Action Plan Initiative.!!!!

36 countries have NAPs – you may have been involved and continue to monitor implementation. PeaceWomen wanted to bring this work together and highlight that NAPs are only effective if the process is consultative and implementation is tracked.

Two events recently took place at UN Headquarters that are critical to UN's mandate to build and maintain peace, but that do not receive enough attention.The first event was "Broadening the Concept of Peacekeeping: The Contribution of Civil Society to the Unarmed Protection of Civilians".

On the 24th of April Michelle Bachelet, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, and Hervé Ladsous, Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations briefed the Security Council on Women, Peace and Security. The open briefing was followed by closed consultations with Council members.

WILPF representatives were very pleased with the opportunity to be active participants at AWID 2012 International Forum: Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice, holding a session on women's security and militarism “From the Beijing Platform to Resolution 1325 - military expenditure and its consequences for women's security”.

****NEW PEACEWOMEN.ORG INITIATIVE LAUNCHED ***

The PeaceWomen Project is pleased to announce that the successful translation of SCR 1820 into Urdu and Bengali as part of the ongoing "Speak Local" campaign of the Translation Initiative! Established to tackle language barriers and to increase awareness of the United Nation's resolutions on women, pea