Asia

The Government will urge for international action to protect women and girls from violence and sexual exploitation in emergency situations.

Girls and women in crisis situations, such as flood, famine and conflict, face a greater risk of abuse, violence, forced marriage and sexual exploitation.

Intervention in these cases are often not prioritised because their situation is not thought to be life-threatening.

Arab women played a central role in the Arab Spring, but their hopes the revolts would bring greater freedom and expanded rights for women have been thwarted by entrenched patriarchal structures and the rise of Islamists, gender experts in the countries say.

Some Syrians say outrage over the sentencing of a teenage girl was a spark that started the country's two-and-a-half year revolt.

A month before protests started in March 2011, Tal al-Mallohi - a 19-year-old who blogged about wanting to shape her country's future - was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of spying.

The Nationwide Women Forum on Peace, Security and Development, jointly organized by women's human rights organizations and Columbia University, began at the Sky Star Hotel in Yangon yesterday.

Women's rights groups Friday demanded passage of the women's reservation bill in the winter session of parliament, saying full and equal political participation of women was critical to the achievement of gender equality.

Ever since a young woman was brutally gang raped in New Delhi in 2012, the international media has focused on the culture of violence against women and sexual assault in India.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau in India, a woman there is raped every 20 minutes.

A coalition of 30 Israeli feminist groups released "A Comprehensive Action Plan for the Application of United Security Council (UNSCR) Resolution 1325" at a public conference in Jaffa on Thursday. They called on the government to include women from all sectors of Israeli society in peace-negotiation teams and other decision- and policy-making bodies.

The government needs to do more to protect migrant workers, ensure that women have access to legal aid, bring cases of violence against women to court and draft an anti-discrimination law, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) said in a new report.

A group of women journalists has investigated for five months the attitude of the Israeli media toward women in politics, focusing on the 2013 Knesset elections. The investigation — so it was defined — tracked expressions of sexism, racism or both, in various media. The material was gathered mostly from newspapers, TV, radio talk shows and social networks.

Two Indonesian women peace activists have won the 2013 N-Peace Awards for their efforts to promote women's equality and protection of women against discrimination.

“The N-Peace Awards for Indonesia this year is awarded to Bapak Suprayoga Hadi and Ibu Valentina Sagala,” United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Communication Associate, Tina Kardjono, in a press statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Monday.