General Women, Peace and Security

The recent election of José Maria de Vasconcelos, or Taur Matan Ruak as he is known, to the Presidency of Timor-Leste is not good news for women in that country.

Adding yet another member of the male military elite to a position of great prestige and power will not increase the political participation of women nor add to a culture of gender equity.

In "Distant View of a Minaret," the late and much-neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband's repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, "as though purposely to deprive her."

The Indonesia National Dialogue with CSOs on National Action Plan P4K, organized by UNDP under the N-Peace initiative, 18-19 April 2012, begins today in Bali, Indonesia.

More than 2,500 women from 140 countries traveled to İstanbul on Thursday for the start of the Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID) 2012 forum.

The four-day international summit has attracted activists, journalists and scholars from across the globe to share their diverse experiences and together explore how to best move forward in channeling and reshaping economic power to advance women's rights and justice.

If one thing holds the overall movement of peace movements together it is the goal of violence reduction. There's a shared conviction that violence is a choice, that there exists, much more often than commonly supposed, a more violent and a less violent course of action.

The involvement of women in anti-war actions and in support of peace activism worldwide is a critical part of modern history, yet the vulnerability of women in conflict situations to violence of all forms is perhaps the most brutal manifestation of patriarchy in modern times. We must probe the areas of ambivalence in women's activism for peace and human rights, argues Sunila Abeysekera.

From March 7–9, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI)—in cooperation with the Haitian Ministry of Justice, the National Police Academy, the Magistrate School and the Medico-Legal Research and Action Unit (Unité de Recherche et d'Action Medico-Légale, or URAMEL)—conducted a workshop on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) for 37 judges, justices of the peace, investigative magistrates, prosecutors and poli

Militarism, Violence and Conflict is one of the themes of the AWID Forum 2012 ↑ which opens tomorrow in Istanbul with 2000 women from around the world meeting to discuss processes of ‘Transforming Economic Power to advance women's rights and justice'.

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- At least 140 Afghan schoolgirls and female teachers were admitted to a local hospital Tuesday after drinking poisoned water, said local health officials, who blamed the act on extremists opposed to women's education.