Participation

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called for concerted efforts among South Asian countries to address the challenges of establishing women's rights in all spheres of life.

She made the call while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the 7th South Asian regional conference on women rights at Hotel Sheraton in the city yesterday morning.

t's Saturday and the women hurry into the cooperative's warehouse in this rural town in southeastern Peru with huge bags of coffee beans on their backs. Some come on their own, others are accompanied by their husbands or children. But they have all hiked long distances from their farms in the mountains where they grow some of the world's top organic specialty coffee.

Margaret Murambiwa (not her real name) of Chavanga village in Mutasa South, situated along the Mozambican border strip is a victim of a retrogressive societal belief that denied her to the right to education.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has urged South Asian leaders to prevent violence against women and remove obstacles on the path to women empowerment.

"South Asian countries have almost identical problems regarding women's rights issues due to socio-economic and political reality of this area," she said after inaugurating the seventh South Asian ministerial conference on women's rights at the Sheraton Hotel on Sunday.

It is a special pleasure for me to be here today with all of you. I want to add my welcome to this extraordinary gathering of women leaders from across Asia. We at the U.S. Department of State are proud to be a partner in this enterprise. Today I hold a new position in my government-one that demonstrates the U.S. Government's commitment to incorporating women's issues into our country's foreign policy.

Women are in fact a productive working group, who in many cases in Indonesia, serve as the economic backbone for their families and to a larger extent the driving force of the country's economy.

Over 60 individuals have arrived in the Tajik capital Dushanbe to participate in a conference on women's empowerment in Central Asia, the Tajik news agency AsiaPlus reported on Monday.

The two-day conference, which is jointly hosted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), opened on Monday.

Rwandan women from the agriculture sector will benefit from a United Nations Programme to enhance the participation of women in good governance and access to services.

A woman took position alongside male soldiers at the graveside of a fallen colleague. She positioned her AK47 on her shoulder, and on command fired into the grey sky with the others.

Mariatu Sesay became at that moment the first woman in the Sierra Leone army to take part in a 21-gun salute to honour a dead soldier.

Latin America is no stranger to female leaders, but not many can match the radical political trajectory of Dilma Rousseff, the 62-year-old onetime Marxist guerrilla leader who stands to become Brazil's first female president.