General Women, Peace and Security

In its annual report, the Human Rights Watch organization released on Tuesday blasts that Women and girls in Somalia face alarming levels of sexual violence throughout the country.

Zimbabwe has made significant strides in gender equality but still lags behind on key indicators, according to the latest SADC Gender Protocol Barometer for the country.On a variety of indicators, Zimbabwe scored a 58 percent gender equity rate, below the regional average of 66 percent.

ZAHLEH, LEBANON — Fear, confusion and a lack of information are preventing many Syrian refugees in Lebanon from knowing where to turn for aid.

With a constant surge of refugees now fighting the bitter winter cold, humanitarian organizations are struggling to find ways to reach them with the information they need to survive — and are recruiting some refugees to help out.

Aside from ushering in hitherto unprecedented changes, the Arab Spring also brought to the fore an unsaid aspect — that the situation of women in Arab countries is more or less the same. In Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, or in some other countries that saw revolutions, the women do not differ from each other.

GENEVA - Syrian activists said Monday that the voice of women from the war-ravaged nation must not be sidelined at peace talks due to start next week in Switzerland.

"We have to take part in the whole process, from A to Z," Syrian Women's League member Sabah Alhallak told reporters in Geneva.

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.

With El Salvador's gang truce teetering on the brink, it's high time to get women involved in any peace negotiations between rival gangs - a move that could help the truce last and protect women's rights, experts say.

El Salvador's two most infamous street gangs - the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, and rival Barrio 18 signed a truce in March 2012, which helped to lower murder rates in one of the world's most violent countries.

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.

Egyptians were voting in a referendum on the country's draft constitution on Tuesday and Wednesday, a document that would enshrine unprecedented gender equality for women.
Since the so-called Arab Spring shook Egypt and the region to its foundations in 2010, the roles and rights of women in the Middle East's most populous country have been under the spotlight.

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.