General Women, Peace and Security

JUBA - Col. Rodento Tungun of Southern Sudan Prison Service (SSPS) has told women in southern Sudan to work hard in order to achieve the twenty five percent allocation of the constitutional jobs reserved for their lot by the government.

The United Nations deputy envoy to Liberia, Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu, today lauded Rwandan police officers serving in the UN mission in the West African country for their professionalism and discipline, saying their presence there had strengthened the capacity and skills of the local police.

A non-profit center for women's rights defense opened in Kirkuk on Sunday under the name of “the Legal Free Center for Women in Kirkuk.”

The fact that the entire UN top management is in Alpbach to prepare the autumn agenda represents a great success for Austria's UN policy and a recognition of our close partnership", said Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger at the beginning of the UN Security Council seminar in Alpbach.

The General Union of Palestinian Women for Social Work, which has over 30,000 members and is considered as one of the most prominent and popular women unions in the Middle East, has issued a statement condemning the clerical regime's executions and crimes against Iranian women.

Africa's political independence was accompanied by a common clarion call to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and disease. Fifty years after the end of colonial, the question is: To what extent has the promise of that call has been realized for African women? There is no doubt that African women's “long walk to freedom” has yielded some results, however painfully and slowly.

Anticipating the appointment in the next few weeks of the highest-level United Nations official ever to promote the rights and status of women worldwide, peace advocates are demanding that the new office take on the issue of the unending violence against women in conflict zones—a plague that keeps spreading despite a decade of Security Council resolutions.

It is an honor to be here with Ambassador Chowdhury, who was the guiding spirit behind Security Council Resolution 1325. We owe him a deep debt of gratitude for his commitment and vision, and for our part, we continue to work to realize the potential of women's participation in all decision-making levels focused on peace and security and keeping women protected from violence.

In military-ruled Burma's Karen state, tradition and a male-dominated social order have long guaranteed men the role of village chiefs. But this order is crumbling in the country's eastern region, giving rise to the new phenomenon of women village chiefs.