Asia

Sri Lanka's security forces have used rape to torture and extract confessions from suspected Tamil separatists almost four years after the country's civil war ended, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Tuesday.

At least 13 women, including teenagers, have been subjected to prolonged rape by Burmese security forces in a remote village in the western state of Arakan. Human rights groups have warned that the incident threatens to trigger further violence in a region where several waves of ethno-religious rioting since June last year have killed more than 1,000 people.

PESHAWAR, 7 January 2013 (IRIN) - There was no warning when gunmen killed seven aid workers with local NGO Support With Working Solution (SWWS) in the Swabi District of Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province on 1 January.

Nhem Sreyda feels fortunate that she is still able to see after being doused with acid by her ex-husband in 2012. "I am lucky that my body can still work, my eyes can still see," the 32-year-old told IRIN.

A senior U.N. official called on both sides of the conflict in Syria to put an end to all forms of sexual violence.

In a statement, the special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, also called for the release of all abducted women and children, the United Nations said in a release Friday.

The tit-for-tat kidnappings of more than 140 people have provoked fears of expanded sectarian conflict in Syria's northern Idlib Province in recent days, but one set of hostages was released in good condition on Saturday after negotiations between residents of two of the affected villages, according to a rebel commander.

Afghan women and girls are increasingly victims of violence with a 20 percent increase last year in the number killed or injured even though the number of civilian casualties fell for the first time in years, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Lebanese women are taking to the streets to demand that the government takes domestic violence seriously, by introducing laws to protect women from abusive partners.

Nadine Mouwad, a founder of feminist collective Nasawiya, says the prevalence of unveiled, glamorous women in Beirut can create the impression that Lebanon is more liberated from patriarchal cultural attitudes than neighboring countries.

A woman has been tortured and burned alive in Papua New Guinea after being accused of using sorcery to kill a young boy, local media report.

The woman, a mother aged 20 named as Kepari Leniata, was stripped, tied up and doused in petrol by the boy's relatives in Mount Hagen in the Western Highlands, said the National newspaper.

She was then thrown onto a fire in front of hundreds of people.

The operating room was chilly on a grey morning in Bihar, Northern India. Tile floors did nothing to insulate from the thick, damp cold seeping through the blankets on rickety hospital beds.