General Women, Peace and Security

President Banda says Zambia is committed to domesticating international instruments on the rights of women and children.

Mr Banda said in Livingstone yesterday that the authorities are also keen to meet the SADC target on equal representation of men and women in decision-making.

Zimbabwe has signed key international and regional instruments designed to empower women and eliminate discrimination and improve gender equality and equity through development legislation, policies, programmes and projects. (Pictured: Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) national coordinator Netsai Mushonga (L) and Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe (R)

Right through our one hour interview, she kept twitching her fingers nervously. A blue handkerchief, neatly folded when we sat down, was a crushed mess by the time the we stopped talking. She did not want her real name used; instead, she wanted me to call her Selvi. A former member of the women's wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Selvi is, for the first time in her adult life, unsure about what she will do next.

Let it not be said that those wags at the United Nations don't have a sense of humour. Given the task of finding an office for its new women's rights body, the premises managers found some space in the iconic Daily News building – otherwise known as the home of Superman.

In a small room in Benghazi some young men and women are putting out a new opposition newspaper. "The role of the female in Libya," reads one headline. "She is the Muslim, the mother, the soldier, the protester, the journalist, the volunteer, the citizen", it adds.

At least 36,000 people were displaced on 23-24 April amid fresh fighting along the Thai-Cambodian border, officials say.

The two countries are at loggerheads over ownership of an 11th century Hindu temple, registered as a UN World Heritage Site in 2008.

Each side accused the other of firing rockets and mortars over disputed territory along their 798km border, forcing civilians to flee the area.

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory has called for protection of the rights of the Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, especially women and children.

The Arab revolutions are beginning to destroy the cliché of an Arab world incapable of democratic transformation.

In Afghanistan's Herat province, the chief prosecutor general has a difficult job.

Fighting for justice against a profoundly corrupt political system is an uphill struggle, but for Maria Bashir the challenge is all the more acute.

It is a society that is still trying to shake off the worst excesses of the Taliban's patriarchal rule and being a woman in a position of power is not only rare, it is dangerous.