Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

This is the first of two articles by Mariz Tadros discussing the disjunctures between the current international discourse on gender based violence and women's realities on the ground in 'Arab transition' contexts.

To highlight the issues of inter-faith harmony and rights of women at the national level, AAWAZ, in collaboration with five well-known civil society organisations – the Aurat Foundation, South Asia Partnership-Pakistan, Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Sungi Development Foundation and Sustainable Development Policy – held a national conference on women, peace and social harmony on Monday.

Women refugees who escaped Syria's conflict to find sanctuary in neighbouring Lebanon have been sexually harassed by employers, landlords and an employee of a local aid group, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

Syria's civil war has caused a big increase in ‘honour killings' and child marriages and the breakdown of the healthcare system, a British-Syrian doctor said on Wednesday.

Healthcare has also become a ‘weapon of war' for the government, which has targeted doctors and withheld vaccinations from children in opposition-held areas, said Rola Hallam, a volunteer with the medical charity Hand in Hand in Syria.

Thousands of women were victims of sexual crimes during the Balkan conflicts. Most of them receive no support from the region's states, despite the progress marked by international criminal law in prosecuting these crimes 'I couldn't do anything, I just laid there while they raped me. There was no way I could defend myself...' Room of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Hague.

Under the dense rainforest canopy, 14-year-old Claudia Roa lay delirious with pain after giving birth to a boy. A nurse in camouflage gear and rubber boots mopped up the blood flowing down her legs.

Roa was only too well aware that having a child with her boyfriend, also a fighter with Colombia's biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was forbidden.

Savoen still wakes up screaming, reliving the evening she and about 30 other women were dragged to a forest by Khmer Rouge cadres.

The women had been resting after a day of digging a pit in the sweltering heat. The soldiers tied their hands and raped them. When they were done, they began slitting the women's throats. Savoen was the last to be taken.

A U.N. General Assembly committee has agreed a landmark first resolution on women's rights defenders such as Malala Yousafzai, despite a hard fought campaign by an alliance including the Vatican to weaken the measure.

A global summit will be held in London next year to demand “justice and respect” for victims of wartime rape, William Hague announced today.

The Foreign Secretary will co-chair the event with Angelina Jolie, the Hollywood actress who has campaigned with him against sexual violence, in her role as a UN special envoy for refugees.

Women in Syria are increasingly the targets of violent abuse and torture by government forces and armed groups.

Some 6,000 women have been raped since the start of the conflict in March 2011, the Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) says.

A spokeswoman for the group said these women were then socially stigmatised, and often forced to flee their homes.