Participation

Afghanistan has its first female police chief after appointing an officer with 25 years experience to head a district of the capital Kabul.
Officials said Colonel Jamila Bayaz would run one of the city's most important police stations in a move that they hope will pave the way for more women to rise through the ranks.

Next month in Geneva, rebels will sit down to talk to representatives of President Bashar al-Assad's government about a peace plan to end Syria's civil war -- a conflict that has killed over 100,000 people since 2011 and driven a third of the population from their homes. In the room alongside the rebels and government officials will be a whole slew of negotiators from various Western countries and Russia.

Libyan political activist Amal al-Taher el-Haj has submitted her name to the General National Congress as a candidate to succeed Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, if he receives a vote of no confidence from parliament this week.

El-Haj, 45, was born in Tripoli, where she is commonly known as “Mimi.” In an interview with Al Arabiya News Channel, she expressed her hopes of being Libya's new prime minister.

The voice of Syrian women must be heard in all efforts to resolve the civil war that is tearing their country apart, a United Nations-sponsored conference declared today, stressing that women's participation is vital in shaping a peaceful future for the strife-wracked Middle Eastern nation.

Military helicopters buzzed overhead and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police were deployed as Egyptians voted Tuesday on a new constitution in a referendum that will pave the way for a likely presidential run by the nation's top general months after he ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

The United Nations entity tasked with advancing gender equality today applauded the appointment of two women to the team negotiating between Colombian authorities and the rebel group known as the FARC.

“We applaud this deliberate effort by President [Juan Manuel] Santos to bring greater gender balance to his negotiating team to bring peace to Colombia,” UN Women said in a news release.

As civil war raged in Burundi since the 1996 outbreak of armed conflict between ethnic Tutsi and Hutu groups, in his role as Facilitator for the Burundi Peace Negotiations, former South African President Nelson Mandela worked with one of UN Women's predecessor organizations to bring women to the peace table for the first time.

The promotion of women's participation in elected assemblies will remain among the top priorities of the authorities, which will continue their relentless efforts in this regard, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Tuesday in Algiers in the opening speech read on his behalf by Minister of Relations with Parliament Mahmoud Khedri at the International Conference on "Women's effective and sustained participation in elected assemblies.&quot

Only three women won seats in the Indian capital's 70-member assembly in recent elections, showing women continue to face huge obstacles to political empowerment in the world's largest democracy, activists said on Monday.

Syrian refugee women have a key role to play in shaping the future of their war-torn homeland, the protection chief of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) told a conference in London today.