The disappearance of Darfur from the international agenda now seems complete, perversely at the very moment when the region may be facing its most dangerous season of violence.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Pakistan.

Norica Nicolai, Åsa Westlund, and Lena Ag, underline the important role women can play in securing long-lasting peace and call for the international community to make firm commitments to gender equality.

“I have said that Afghanistan not only needs building construction, but also mental construction.”

–Farkhunda Zahra Naderi, member of the Afghan Parliament

TODAY is our human family's first-ever International Day of the Girl.

This week our Maghreb Regional Director Stephanie Willman Bordat was quoted in a USA Today article entitled “Arab Spring reforms still leaving women out in the cold.” Stephanie put it more starkly – that women are not just out in the cold, but their rights are slipping backwards in the region. That deeply concerns me because violence against women persists when the rights of women are denied or not recognized.

Addressing the meeting, veterans For Peace President Leah Bolger stressed VFP's commitment to doing everything possible to prevent a US or US-assisted attack on Iran.

Bolger also said VFP hopes to send a delegation to Iran in October.

Bolger's full prepared remarks follow:

In the winter of 1975-76 I was living in the depths of the Zagros Mountains in Iran. I was working for the Persian Department of Environmental Conservation, based in a little village on the shores of Lake Parishan in Dasht-e Arjan National Park.

Where are the women? In traditional historical and scholarly accounts of the making and fighting of wars, women are often nowhere to be seen. With few exceptions, war stories are told as if men were the only ones who plan, fight, are injured by, and negotiate ends to wars. As the pages of this book tell, though, those accounts are far from complete. Women can be found at every turn in the (gendered) phenomena of war.

What if I suggested that reducing the rates of rape and sexism in the U.S. would reduce our risk of international conflict? You might think that American girls and women who regularly adapt their lives to deal with “harmless” street harassment, or who are assaulted by American men, have little to do with, say, the Iraq War.