Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

It's perhaps the only market in the world where all the vendors are women. Ima Keithal in Manipur's capital of Imphal (in the north eastern region of India on the border of Myanmar/Burma) is a tourists' paradise where women, sell everything from vegetables to beautiful hand spun shawls. But there's a bitter behind-the-scenes story here.

At first Samira Ibrahim was afraid to tell her father that Egyptian soldiers had detained her in Tahrir Square in Cairo, stripped off her clothes, and watched as she was forcibly subjected to a “virginity test.”

Activists with the April 6 group distribute medicine in a neighborhood of Cairo. Few women have leadership roles in such groups.

Sergeant Eunice Kisembo discovered she was HIV positive in 2001 after her release from Luzira Prison.
Kisembo says during a three-and-half-year term imprisonment on allegations of aiding LRA rebels, prison warders commanded her to walk naked and one raped her.

IN 2002, women in Liberia helped bring an end to one of Africa's bloodiest wars by staging a series of peace protests — including a boycott on having sex with their husbands. In 1996, a female political party in Northern Ireland helped push for an end to sectarian violence.

Wartime rape is a persistent and brutal aspect of conflict, whether during or in the aftermath of hostilities. In the recent warfare in Libya, as well as in most civil and international armed conflicts, women were subjected to different forms of visible and invisible violence, including sexual exploitation and abuse.

Just 15 years old, Sahar Gul has become the bruised and bloodied face of women's rights in Afghanistan. The teenage bride's eyes were swollen nearly shut as she was wheeled into the hospital seven months after her arranged marriage. Black scabs crusted her fingertips where her nails used to be.

(Photo Bulent Kilic / AFP/Getty Images)

Would a traditional struggle overwhelmed by sexism and affiliated discriminative tendencies be capable of liberating Kurdistan?

The public campaign to end violence against women has come and gone but the issue of sexual violence against women is on the rise in Liberia.

Deputy Chief Prosecutor, George Sargbeh speaking recently at a news conference in Monrovia said, “the lack of sufficient evidence is an impediment to prosecuting sexual and gender-based violence.”

Thousands of Egyptian women have held rallies in Cairo against their treatment by security forces.
Demonstrators brandished photos of a woman who was beaten and dragged along the ground, exposing her underwear - an incident that has outraged Egyptians.

The rally took place in Tahrir Square, which has seen five days of deadly clashes between protesters and troops.