Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Supreme Court Justice Yoram Danziger ruled on Wednesday that Katsav, who was convicted of rape and sexual harassment, and sentenced to seven years in prison by the Tel Aviv District Court, is not a flight risk nor does he present a danger to the public.

The gang-rape of Mukhtaran Mai launched a nine-year court battle that concluded with a verdict by the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitting all but one of the accused. Her case illustrates how both the formal and informal systems of justice share the same hostility to women who defy social norms and demand justice in cases of rape, says Ayesha khan.

Punjab province saw a 21 per cent leap in officially recorded crimes against women in February 2011, compared to January 2011, according to Free and Fair Election Network's (Fafen) collection of officially documented criminal cases in 69 districts across Pakistan.

These crimes against women include honour killings, sexual harassment, compelling a woman to marry, rape and offenses related to marriage law.

You can only hear so many stories before you reach the limit of your own endurance. My moment came on a visit to a refugee camp in Chad, where Hawaye, a beautiful Darufi woman holding her newborn baby, told me hers.

The Jangaweed - armed mercenaries - had ridden into her village, killed her husband and decapitated their baby in her arms. They had taken her captive and kept her as a sex slave.

As Colonel Gaddafi continues his pillage in North Africa, harrowing skeletons from his closet remain buried deep in the soil along the continent's western edge. The brutal conflicts of West Africa -- in Liberia and Sierra Leone -- were led by men, like Charles Taylor, who trained in camps sponsored by Gaddafi in the 1980s.

Much attention has been focused on the process of radicalisation of young men in the areas of Pakistan that border Afghanistan. Peshawar, the town near the border between the two countries, is infamous for being the centre of a vibrant industry and trade in homemade guns.

When Toronto police Const. Michael Sanguinetti told a safety forum at Osgoode Hall Law School that women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized, he could have had no idea how far those words would echo.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was ordered on Monday to be held without bail over allegations that he had sexually assaulted a housekeeper in a lavish suite at a Midtown hotel.

A local women's rights group has called on authorities to tackle sexual exploitation of trafficked women by prosecuting purchasers instead of prostitutes, applying trafficking law to strippers and offering gender sensitivity training to police, journalists and children.