Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

The peace imposed on the more than 200,000 people living in the Complexo do Alemão group of favelas in Rio de Janeiro by Brazil's military police is helping to pave the way for the recognition of basic human rights.

Experts have predicted an increase in the incidents of violence against women (VAW) in future and termed the trend a natural product of new social order which allows larger space for women.

On February 28, 2011, the White House released President Obama's proclamation reaffirming March as Women's History Month and March 8, 2011 as International Women's Day. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the holiday celebrating women. In the proclamation, the President applauds the accomplishments of women in all walks of life while reminding us that “there is still work to be done before women achieve true parity”.

Warfare is stopping 28 million children worldwide from receiving an education because of sexual violence and attacks on schools, the UN education fund says.

The report's author told the BBC one of the worst-affected places was the Democratic Republic of Congo, calling it "the rape capital of the world".

One third of the rapes reported in DR Congo involve children, Unesco says.

Nearly seven years ago, the soldiers who killed Halya Lagunesse's husband gang-raped the Haitian woman and her then-17-year-old daughter.

Last March, she learned that her 5-year-old granddaughter, who was conceived in the attack on her daughter, had been raped also. The attacker gave the child about 50 cents to go and buy rice. On her way back, he dragged her into a cemetery.

A key police officer in the minister of internal affairs of the government of south Sudan denied Friday allegations of rape of female police recruits and physical abuse during a year-long police training period in Juba.

Anti-government protesters, who have taken to the streets of Khartoum and other Sudanese cities over recent weeks, run the risk of sexual assault, torture and detention, say human rights workers and demonstrators.

In a groundbreaking 1994 report The Asia Foundation identified some of the underlying causes of domestic violence in Cambodia: a culture of male dominance; police reluctance to intervene; pressure on women victims not to sully their families' reputations; and, the Khmer ideal of a “perfect lady,” still taught in schools, which instructs wives never to say anything negative about their husbands.

A leading human rights group released a report Monday documenting the proliferation of human rights abuses in Iraq since the United States' invasion in 2003.

Among the most egregious cases, the 102-page report by Human Rights Watch identifies women, journalists, detainees and marginalised groups, including internally displaced persons and religious minorities, as the most vulnerable populations in Iraq.

In the small Latin American country of Guatemala, violence against women is a widespread problem girls deal with from a young age.