Asia

The Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict Summit that took place in London Between 10 – 13 June 2014 was a great platform for international NGOs and grassroots women organisations to show the impact of sexual violence on civilians and discuss the programmes they are leading to combat this impact.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged Nepal to appoint more female peacekeepers so as to make UN peacekeeping missions inclusive and gender balanced. Ban made this request when he received Prime Minister Sushil Koirala at his office in the UN Headquarters in New York, late Friday.

Although Nepal met the objective of increased women´s participation in the ongoing peace building and state restructuring process -- of at least 33 percent -- meaningful participation of women in the process has yet to be achieved, a report claimed.

The report said Myanmar has no female township administrators and just 0.11 percent of ward and village-tract administrators are women.

The study is part of a series of papers on sub-national government funded by the Asia Foundation and the Myanmar Development Resource Institute's Centre for Economic and Social Development (MDRI CESD).

The gender audit in peace building programme conducted in 10 districts from March-May 2014 states that the victims of decade-long insurgency are the least informed people about National Action Plan 1325.

The research states that out of 45 survivors/victims who were interviewed, only 17 were informed about t National Action Plan 1325 and that the key victims were least informed about it.

Although Nepal met the objective of increased women´s participation in the ongoing peace building and state restructuring process -- of at least 33 percent -- meaningful participation of women in the process has yet to be achieved, a report claimed.

40 participants from Fiji, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, RMI, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu will graduate from the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre's Regional Training Program 6pm tomorrow Thursday, 19 June 2014 at the Southern Cross Hotel Conference Room in Suva.

A senior U.N. aid official said on Tuesday she had witnessed a level of human suffering never seen before in camps for some 140,000 stateless Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine state, displaced by Buddhist-Muslim violence sparked in 2012.

Senior UN human rights officials at a UN Human Rights Council event have called for immediate efforts to end caste-based rape and violence against women. The event, co-sponsored by Human Rights Watch, followed calls for action from human rights organizations and India's UN representative in response to the gang-rape and hanging of two girls in Uttar Pradesh May 27.

Millions of Afghans have cast their votes in a presidential run-off to elect a successor to Hamid Karzai, who has been in office since 2001.