General Women, Peace and Security

She had expected a job in a hotel. But when Valentina arrived here two months ago from Romania, the man who helped her get here — a man she had considered her boyfriend — made it clear that the job was on the side of the road.

Last week, a young woman from the Karen ethnic minority in Burma reported being “beaten, drugged, and sexually assaulted by two men wearing army fatigues.” In November 2011, reports emerged that four women were being kept as sex slaves by the Burmese military near the Kachin-China border; forced to cook and clean during the day and gang-raped at night by the soldiers in the Light Infantry Battalion 321.

Military and civilian experts convened at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) for the inaugural Women, Peace and Security Conference March 29-30, to discuss issues related to the current U.S. National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security.

Speakers at the ‘Collective Action for Ensuring Women's and Girl's Participation in Electoral Processes in Pakistan' forum on Monday highlighted the need for women's and girl's participation in electoral processes as an important channel for ensuring that they maintain both voice and visibility, and are part of decision making processes which is essential for a strong democracy.

Human trafficking was on the agenda today at the United Nations in New York as a UN General Assembly interactive dialogue meeting, “Fighting Human Trafficking: Partnership and Innovation to End Violence Against Women,” revealed that international funding efforts are falling short, in spite of ongoing organizational efforts to decrease the number of people forced to be world labourers.

Gender inequality was the topic of discussion by a group of panelist during the launch of the “World Development Report 2012 on Gender Equality and Development.”

The panel discussion on the theme, “Towards Gender Equality in the Pacific” was held at the University of the South Pacific's Laucala Campus in Suva.

As part of her floor speech pushing to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) on Wednesday, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) told the story of her own history of being sexually assaulted during her childhood and then raped as a young woman.

Women in Pakistan have faced formidable challenges in their efforts to achieve gender equality and address gender-based violence in their country, with particular problems posed by elements among customary norms and practices.

The second Dutch National Action Plan 1325 (NAP 1325-II) kicked off on 21 February 2012. Nuffic is one of the 40 signatories of the four-year plan, which aims to improve the political position of women in conflict zones in Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, the Republic of South Sudan and the MENA region.

At the end of her official country mission to Papua New Guinea, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Rashida Manjoo, delivered the following statement: