Forty-eight women are raped every hour in the Congo. Alarmed by such statistics, a group of media colleagues launched a website shedding light on the horrors Congolese women experience daily. The team is composed of three Canadians and one German, all master's degree candidates at the University for Peace located in Costa Rica.

This website reveals that the use of electoral quotas for women is much more widespread than is commonly held. An increasing number of countries are currently introducing various types of gender quotas for public elections: In fact, half of the countries of the world today use some type of electoral quota for their parliament.

United Nations Human Rights Council 17
Panel on Women-Poverty-Crises-Human Rights
3 June 2011

We as a people had embarked on a long journey that had many stops. Our current journey of the last sixty years had many stops. In the course of this journey some perished, others were born and raised. Some of us lost their way and yet others seem not to understand. In the course of this journey we met those who engaged in conversation with us, others accompanied us and others engaged us in preparing our current stop.

She was a regular girl from Peshawar who grew up to be appointed president of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

Khalida Rashid, who was recently appointed as the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, is a source of pride.

The following statement was issued today by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW):

America Abroad Media and NPR-affliate WAMU present a discussion on the state of women's rights in Afghanistan since U.S. and NATO allies invaded the country in 2001 and ousted the Taliban. The program connects speakers and audience members in Kabul and Washington D.C.

Guests

A newly published study in the American Journal of Public Health estimates more than two million women have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2006. But women's advocates say there is also positive news coming from the DRC.

On 12 June a Bahraini poet and student was sentenced to one year in prison for reading a poem criticizing the king of Bahrain.