Mrs Charlotte Osei, Chairman, National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) on Wednesday stressed the need to build capacities at the technical domain and develop tools to ensure effective implementation of programmes towards gender equality.

After years of protesting Iran's human rights violations of political prisoners, Mansoureh Behkish is soon to become a political prisoner herself. Behkish has been summoned by the Iranian authorities to report to the Evin prison in Iran on 29 January 2013 to start a six-month sentence for her involvement with the nonviolent Mourning Mothers movement.

The Ministry for the Status of Women and Women's Rights is not idle. The Minister, Marie Yanick Mézile multiplies the actions and intensify its efforts to enable girls and women to enjoy the same rights and privileges as men.

Twenty-six women – Liberian and their visitors – several small children and a few men are pressed into the round, mud-walled hut.

As Yugoslavia split apart in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, the breakaway state of Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered four years of cataclysmic horrors. A conflict over territory claimed by neighboring Serbia became a bloodbath of ethnic “cleansing” at the hands of Serbian-backed militias and vigilantes.

MURDER is an everyday tragedy in Guatemala, one of the world's most violent countries. With around 15 killings a day, most violent deaths merit only a couple of paragraphs in the papers. But the slaying last week of two girls, aged six and 11, has shocked the country and been widely reported outside Latin America.

Jorge Velazquez struggled to watch the news this week.

The news headlines in Guatemala, which has one of highest murder rates in the world, are often enough to upset anyone.

But when Jorge recently saw the news that two young girls, aged around six and 12, had been found strangled to death in a street in Guatemala City, suddenly a flood of memories came back to him.

A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer was returned to prison on Monday, unexpectedly curtailing a three-day temporary leave to visit her family, which was expected to be extended.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been serving a six-year prison sentence since September 2010, was granted her first furlough from Tehran's Evin Prison on 17 January on production of a hefty bail.

In 2004, a Kurdish woman was shot dead in her hospital bed in Istanbul for having had a baby out of wedlock. Her life was taken by relatives as the price of redeeming family honor. Last week, another Kurdish woman was shot dead in Paris because of her prominent role in one of the world's bloodiest guerrilla groups. Her life was taken by unknown assassins in an apparent bid to sabotage Ankara's fledgling efforts for peace with the rebels.