Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

From gang rape and honour killings to domestic abuse and acid attacks, millions of women suffer horrific violence every day, but nowhere more so than in the five countries a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll identifies as the most dangerous places to be born female.

Afghanistan came top of the list followed by Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia.

An old woman had died. Before burying the her, the residents of the village of Obo — in southern Central African Republic, just north of the Congolese border — gathered around a campfire to eat, drink, cry and sing in celebration of the woman's long life. It was a night in March 2008, just another beat in the slow rhythm of existence in this farming community of 13,000 people.

Violence starts in the mind, so we have to start by changing the minds of men and women all over the world." Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, democracy leader in Burma, participated in the conference by video.

The internationally-acclaimed street artist Shepard Fairey has created a captivating new design exclusively for Amnesty International in its 50th year to support its global call to defend the rights of women and girls in Nicaragua.

In a recent Al Jazeera report, doctors working in a hospital spoke of how they found Viagra and condoms in the pockets of dead Libyan army soldiers. Putting this together with the reports of rape of women adds important details to the picture of an army not only armed with the hardware of war such as guns, rifles, tanks, and bombs but also the chemical and protective gear to carry out yet another way to attack — rape.

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing the importance of UN peacekeeping operations in responding to HIV/AIDS in conflict and post-conflict situations.

A woman was allegedly paraded naked in the streets of Neelor Bala village on the instigation of a jirga that found her son guilty of rape.

Four armed men, who belonged to the same village as that of the ‘raped' woman, allegedly disrobed the middle-aged woman before making her parade naked.

Police has confirmed the report and arrested three members of the jirga.

Five United Nations agencies have banded together to call for urgently addressing gender-biased sex selection favouring boys, a common practice in many parts of South, East and Central Asia that they say fuels a culture of discrimination and violence.

Afghanistan's women are among the most oppressed in the world. Under Taliban-rule, they were denied education, married off as children, and honour killings were considered a family's right.

Coalition forces have been in Afghanistan now for almost 10 years, denying the Taliban the right to govern. So how has life changed for Afghan women?

There are 2000 students at Bamiyan University and women now make up 20 percent.

South Africa has been referred to as the global capital of rape. More recently we've become the international headliner for "corrective rape", which refers to the rape of a lesbian purportedly as a means of "correcting" her sexual orientation or gender identity.