General Women, Peace and Security

Two years ago, Claudia Felizardo Armando from Mozambique applied for a job - with a difference. She signed up to find and destroy land mines in a country heavily scarred by the remnants of 16 years of civil war.

Armando became one of the first local women deminers for the HALO Trust, a charity that removes land mines and other war debris in affected countries around the world.

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Timor-Leste, Ameerah Haq, presided over a dialogue with civil society on UN Security Council resolution 1325 in Dili on 11 June, on the occasion of the Global Open Day on women and peace.

From May 15-16, 2010, SGI-Indonesia women and young women members sponsored the fourth Women's Peace Conference at the SGI-Indonesia Headquarters Building in Jakarta. The event was also held in commemoration of "SGI-Indonesia Women's Day" on May 14.

Dozens of Afghan women from the provinces of Kandahar in the south to Takhar in the north are calling on Afghan leaders to give more visibility to women's rights at the Kabul Conference on Tuesday, cautioning that unless more is done to include women in the national decision making, the progress towards women's empowerment made in the past decade will be lost.

Plans for a peace deal with the Taleban in Afghanistan could seriously jeopardize the rights of the Afghan people, in particular Afghan women, unless concrete human rights benchmarks are incorporated, said Amnesty International.

The Ministry of Justice, in collaboration with United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and other partners, Tuesday commenced a three-day Security Training Workshop on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) for State security personnel assigned at border posts between Liberia and neighbouring countries.

United Nations development chief Helen Clark has lauded the progress made by Ghana towards women's empowerment and gender equality, one of the eight social and economic objectives known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015.

The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry, received a group of 20 women leaders and peace activists in Gaza, for a consultation on their concerns regarding peace and security in the Gaza Strip. The meeting was the last of a series of Global Open Days on Women and Peace, held around the world in the context of the 10th anniversary of Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325.

The new UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women will pump the bulk of its projected US$500 million annual budget into programming to directly benefit the world's most vulnerable women, but this unprecedented boost may still leave the agency lacking influence and impact, civil society advocates say.

A woman who fled Iran after alleging that she had been raped in detention during its post-election upheaval has reported being physically attacked by Iranian agents while seeking refuge in Turkey.