General Women, Peace and Security

Influential female singers known as “Hakamat” are still fuelling inter-tribal conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, despite efforts to teach them about building peace in their communities.

Traditional songs which ridicule fellow tribesmen who try to defuse conflicts with neighbouring groups help stoke tensions in the region.

With democracy protests still sweeping the Arab world and the global financial crisis continuing to bite, the push for women's economic empowerment and political participation is paramount, the head of the U.N. women's agency Michelle Bachelet says.

The girl's voice dropped to a hush as she remembered the bright, sunny afternoon when she stepped out of her hut and saw her best friend buried in the sand, up to her neck.

Her friend had made the mistake of refusing to marry a Shabab commander. Now she was about to get her head bashed in, rock by rock.

The relentless wave of femicides in Guatemala, which has one of the highest female murder rates in the world, has prompted actions by the government, civil society groups, and two Nobel Peace laureates to try to put a stop to this brutal violence against women, which has reached horrific proportions.

SECRETARY CLINTON: (Applause.) Well, thank you so much. Thanks to the Bavarian State Chancellery, which is hosting us, especially to Minister Merk, for organizing this breakfast, and to all of you for getting up so early on a Sunday morning in the cold to come out to show solidarity and support for women in international security.

A new action plan opens far-reaching possibilities to improve the security of women and the world. With some caution, women's peace advocates plan to monitor its implementation.

On 31 October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (SC1325) affirming the importance of women's voices in the resolution of war and conflict. http://www.un.org/events/res_1325e.pdf (accessed 20 January 2012) For women and women's organisations, this was an extraordinary achievement.

On the diplomatic front the Korean ambassador to the United Nations was named president of the forty-one-nation governing body for UN Women.

The election of Kim Sook as the head of the U-N Women Executive Board was formally recognized at a regular session of the UN group in New York.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, a best-selling author and internationally-known lecturer, is a qualified psychiatrist and Jungian analyst. She is presently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California Medical Center.