Asia

Just hours after a correspondent for Britain's Channel 4 News filed a video report from the Syrian village of Houla, where dozens of children were killed in a massacre last week, Syria's ambassador to the United Nations made it clear that his government would not be swayed by witness accounts of the killings gathered by journalists.

Kofi Annan, the joint United Nations-Arab League envoy to Syria, has admitted that his peace plan is failing and that the country's future will consist of "brutal suppression, massacres, sectarian violence and even all-out civil war" if it continues on its current path.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad "massacred" about 100 people, including many women and children, at a village in central Syria on Wednesday, the opposition Syrian National Council says.

A week ago somewhere in the Gilbert Camp area, another young woman's life had been taken as result of violence, violence against women.

Although, reports after reports shows that Violence against women and young girls in Solomon Islands is very high, the issue soon sort of faded away from people's thoughts and it emerges again if another woman or young girl dies in such a very inhuman way as result of violence against women.

Authorities in the Philippines are reporting a sharp uptick in the number of gender-based violence cases over the last five years.

“From 2006 to the present, there has been a constant increase,” Senior Superintendent Theresa Ann Cid, of the Philippine National Police (PNP), told IRIN.

Many around the world have died protecting it: land. The issue is highly charged in Cambodia where it flared again last week after 13 women, including a 72-year-old, were jailed for illegal occupation of land and “aggravated rebellion” after demonstrating on the site of their former homes in Phnom Penh, knocked down to make way for a commercial development, The Associated Press reported.

With her father sitting nearby, 16-year-old Jenan Merza struggled to explain why she was lying in bed recovering from a gunshot wound.

Jenan Merza, 16, forced to wed a cousin, shot herself.

“I didn't know the gun was loaded,” she said, resting under a red-and-gold blanket in a stark room with a bare concrete floor.

Watch Euronews' video report on Hanaa Edwar

With insecurity and economic hardship, Iraqis are still paying the price of years of oppression and war. And women carry a heavy burden. Hanaa Edwar, a human rights activist, has never stopped fighting for women's rights.

After four years of intense work, the 601-member Constituent Assembly (CA) missed a May 27 deadline to adopt a new constitution with political parties failing to agree on restructuring the country into a federation of states based on ethnic lines.

International Security Assistance Force commander U.S. Marine Gen. John R. Allen and NATO's senior civilian representative to Afghanistan Simon Gass hosted a roundtable discussion at ISAF Headquarters, June 3, inviting female members of the Afghan Parliament, members of the High Peace Council, and prominent members of civil society.