Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told government delegates and activists here Friday that violence against women remains a "global pandemic" and that their "subjugation" constitutes "a threat to the national security of the United States."

Reading the minority report of the International Criminal Court declining to authorise investigations into the post-election violence, one cannot help but be impressed by its sagacity and depth of knowledge of the situation in Kenya.

Despite studies which suggest that as many as one in two women in some parts of South Africa are affected by domestic violence, political parties in South Africa lack concrete, practical strategies to address violence against women, a debate organised by Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, Women'sNet and the department of political studies at Wits University has revealed.

The Congolese conflict is considered the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, and the deadliest since World War II. Since 1998, more than six million people have died as a result of this war. Over two million people have been forced to flee their homes, and some 400,000 Congolese have sought refuge in neighboring countries. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been kidnapped, raped, and tortured.

Rape in wartime is a scar on modern society that must be stamped out by ending impunity and changing men's attitudes towards women, says Margot Wallstrom, the United Nations' first special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

Southern Sudan army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has been accused of killing and raping civilians in Central Equatoria state.

According to Nhial Bol, Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Juba-based The Citizen newspaper, in a news report he published on Monday, said residents of Terekeka County of Central Equatoria state have accused the forces of the SPLA of raping women and girls in their villages.

One minute Halimo Mohamed, 40, was at home with her children, the next she was on the move, fleeing violence in Somalia's capital, after her Karan neighbourhood, in north Mogadishu, was hit by a barrage of shells, killing dozens and destroying homes, including hers.

I was unemployed, trying to kickstart a career in political journalism, when I received a call from a BBC producer making a documentary about the Democratic Republic of Congo. My uncle works in the Congolese community in north London, translating, teaching English, offering advice; the documentary makers had come to him looking for a young woman, living in Britain but born in DRC, who had not been back for a long while. I fitted the bill.

The testimonies of women who survived sexual violence during post-election conflict in 2008 should be heard, say advocates. The magnitude of the crimes committed against women because of their gender must be recorded and prosecuted to prevent such violence from occurring again.

Margot Wallström's two-year U.N. assignment to stem sexual violence in conflict areas begins March 1, with an immediate focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo.