General Women, Peace and Security

The Government of Liberia via the Ministry of Gender and Development has said no considerable improvement has been made by the state in the welfare of girls in the country, despite the launch of a special operation to improve their (girls) lives.

The UN envisaged Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, passed on the 31 October 2000 as a landmark document that promises to protect women's rights and guarantee their equal participation in peace processes. UNSCR 1325 takes into account women's different experiences of conflict and their contributions to building peace and sustainable security.

“We do not want to go back on our gains. Whatever we have gained in the past 10-11 years, we do not want to give an inch of it,” said Mahbouba Seraj, founder and director of the Organization for Research in Peace and Solidarity.

“There is no going back, we don't want to do that, so that's why we want the support of the world,” she told AFP during a whirlwind trip to Washington.

Women are needed, not only in the home, but also at the negotiating table, to achieve peace. Decisions made without women not only are less likely to include consideration of women and their specific struggles, but also such decisions willfully perpetuate inequality, uneven power relations, and minimize the both the suffering and potential contribution of women.

I woke up early that Sunday morning last May to attend the Nakba Day at Kass-Kass Park, just outside of Shatila Palestinian refugee Camp in Beirut. I made a promise to Doha Abou Jamous—a young Palestinian resident of the Shatila Camp who I interviewed earlier in the week—that I would attend the festival to see her perform her dance recital.

Thirty-two American protestors, majority of them are women, joined Imran Khan's peace march against the drone attacks.

Campaigners from the anti-war group 'Code Pink', visited Pakistan to make contact with people affected by the drone strikes and draw the attention of the American public to the impact of attacks.

Zainab Salbi, the founder of the nonprofit humanitarian organization Women for Women International and author of “The Other Side of War: Women's Stories of Survival and Hope,” criticized the United States for contributing to Iraqi women's diminishing social position in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq in a lecture in Filene Auditorium on Thursday.

Culture is not always worth preserving.

This sentiment was echoed throughout the panels and workshops at “Breaking Barriers: What it will take to achieve security, justice and peace,” a recent conference at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego.

The Honour Based Violence Awareness Network says today the UNFPA – United Nations Population Fund statistics estimates that 5,000 “so-called honour” killings are committed around the world every year. Across the Western world there are rising levels of ‘honour' violence.

Last month saw two major stories involving sexual abuse in the headlines of Nicaraguan newspapers. First came the account of a mentally and physically disabled 12-year-old girl allegedly raped by four policemen and a security guard 30 meters from the presidential compound in the capital. Three policemen were arrested, but not the guard, who local media reported works for a company with political ties to a top Sandinista leader.