Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Police in Jammu and Kashmir have registered a complaint of abduction and rape based on allegations by a woman against two Army personnel.

Rukaya Bano, a woman in south Kashmir's Kulgam district, has alleged that two Army men raped her after abducting her when she came out of her home on Tuesday.

Last month, the first woman ever was convicted of genocide.

They answered an ad promising lucrative work as au pairs in Amman, but found themselves caught up in the web of sex trafficking between Israel and Jordan.

Israeli border guards late Wednesday detected something was not quite right about three nervous women crossing the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. They told a story of being nurses who wanted to tour Jerusalem, but soon burst into tears.

Kosovo is a source, destination and transit country for trafficking of women and children, a recently released US State Department report said. Although the government has made some effort to combat human trafficking, it has failed to comply with minimum standards, while serious institutional gaps remain, the report concludes.

Burma's horrific military tactics drag on thanks to Asean's silence, inaction in 1989, following the collapse of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), a number of armed ethnic armies entered into a series of ceasefire agreements with Rangoon. The fighting stopped, to a degree, but deep down nobody believed it would last. It was just a matter of time before the various groups resumed fighting.

Just five days before the submission date, the government has yet to begin work on its report on the Convention Against Torture (CAT). After ratifying the United Nations convention on June 23, 2010, the government was required to submit a report under the “UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” on July 23.

Somalia has been plagued by decades of woes - persistent conflict, waves of natural disasters and drought. While these crises make headlines, the country's embattled people - a quarter of whom have been uprooted - also face personal tragedies that are no less devastating.

The United Nations has described East Africa's drought as an emergency, one phase before famine, with more than 10 million people forced to rely on urgent food aid.

Here's a round-up of what some aid agencies are saying about the crisis, its impact and the responses to it:

Tungsten, gold and other minerals used in consumer electronics come from all over the world, but one troubled African nation is a primary international supplier. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) provides much of the tantalum, tin and other precious metals used by dozens of manufacturers in the cell phones and laptops we use every day.

The European Union will provide $3.5m to help care for rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo under an agreement signed Monday.

The cash will go towards “appropriate medical care” for victims of sexual attacks in the east of the country, the EU said in a statement – an area where almost 250 women say they were raped by deserting soldiers last month.