Asia

Solomon Islands' new police commissioner says the police must set an example when it comes to addressing the country's high rate of violence against women.

This year's World Bank Development Report cites Solomon Islands as having the world's worst level of sexual violence against women, with 64 percent of women having experienced domestic violence.

Some Syrian refugees arriving in Jordan are opting to marry off their daughters at a young age believing that marital status offers a form of protection and insurance.

"In Maraq, we have come across around 50 cases of early marriages since the day we started helping out Syrians. Most of them are married to Syrians, especially cousins," said Khaled Ghanem, from the Islamic Society Centre (ISC).

This week I was invited to an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in the Austrian capital Vienna. The gathering, held to discuss the safety of journalists working in areas of conflict and civil unrest, was part of the organization's continued efforts to bolster security and increase cooperation between the organizations' 56 member states.

At a news conference by the “My Nationality Is a Right for Me and My Family” campaign and the National Alliance for Legislating the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence in Beirut, the Lebanese women participating in the event seemed to struggle to voice their cause in a way their government might understand.

India should eliminate coercive female sterilization practices as it implements plans for the expanded contraceptive services it announced at an international conference in London, Human Rights Watch and two reproductive health rights networks, the Coalition Against Two Child Norm and Coercive Population Policies and CommonHealth Coalition for Maternal-Neonatal Health and Safe Abortions, said today.

Government forces in Syria are targeting women for rape and assault as the conflict between President Bashar al-Assad and anti-government forces continues to escalate, according to a report released by a human rights group on Wednesday.

“No scalpel, no stitch and no rest needed,” guarantees Dr. Ghulam Shabbir Sudhayao, referring to the surgical procedure called vasectomy – the least popular method of birth control around the world, including Pakistan.

In a grainy video that shocked viewers around the world, a young woman named Najiba shrouded in a gray shawl sits alone on a hillside surrounded by men with guns and waits to be executed. Now Afghan activists are stepping out and speaking out in solidarity with the murdered young woman to press their government to take violence against women far more seriously—and to demand some say in whatever peace with the Taliban might come.

Almost unnoticed, Nepal's burgeoning adult entertainment industry has been drawing young girls away from being trafficked across the border to the fleshpots of India's big cities.

Rights activists are worried that the issue of internal trafficking has not received the kind of legislative attention that resulted in laws, passed in 2007, to prevent and punish trafficking of young girls across Nepal's borders by prostitution rings.

Shanta Chaudhary was eight years old when her parents sold her into effective slavery for $75, sending her to scrub, cook and sweep for 19 hours a day at the house of a stranger in southwestern Nepal.Now a strident rights campaigner, politician and one of the country's most influential women, she weeps as she recalls 18 years spent as a "kamlari", rising at 4:00 am, receiving regular beatings and witnessing rape and abuse.