General Women, Peace and Security

A meeting of the United Nations committee on the elimination of discrimination against women opened in New York today to look into the situation of women in eight countries, including Papua New Guinea, which will be reviewed for the first time, and India, which will be examined on an exceptional basis.

Even as U.N. peacekeeping operations in the world's battle zones continue to expand, women soldiers, police and civilian support staff remain a small minority – something that sorely needs to change, U.N. officials say.

Today, there are more than 113,000 peacekeepers, including 90,000 military and police personnel, serving in 18 U.N. operations in four continents.

Two of Fiji's women activists are among eight Pacific Island representatives at the 53rd Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which begins in New York today.

In a press statement, Angie Chand of the Pacific Disability Forum says the Commission meet is an opportunity to be able to highlight the issues faced by women and girls with disabilities.

In an effort to raise awareness of the role women could play in maintaining peace and security around the world, the Chairperson of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women urged Committee members to use the forty-sixth session, opening today, to recognize the tenth anniversary of the Security Council's landmark resolution on women, peace and security.

For decades, advocates for women believed that a campaign for "gender mainstreaming" at the United Nations—that is, consciously factoring women into programs worldwide, promoting laws to support women at local and national levels and ensuring that women were well represented and heard in the UN itself—was all that was needed to bring the status of women, and women's rights, in from the margins of the international system.

Anat Hoffman, leader of the Women of the Wall prayer group, was arrested at the Western Wall on Monday for holding a Torah scroll. She is suspected of violating a High Court ruling which prohibits women to read the Torah at the holy site. Hoffman was taken to a nearby police station, while her fellow group members protested outside the building.

The English senior seminar class presented the documentary film "Algeria: Women at War" in Bryan Jr. auditorium on March 18 as part of a series of films concerning the lives of Arab women.

Terrorism and Afghan insurgency have so overshadowed other issues in Pakistan that it sometimes feels like we -- common Pakistanis -- have no other issues. Take, for example, women rights. Here I am not insinuating feminism or related issues. We are still stuck at basics in this country.

In an historic move, the United Nations General Assembly voted unanimously today to create a new entity to accelerate progress in meeting the needs of women and girls worldwide.

An Israel soldier is to face manslaughter charges for shooting dead two Palestinian women during Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip in January 2009.