Asia

Women are facing disproportionately high risks to their livelihoods and health from climate change, as well as associated risks such as human trafficking, states a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is seared into our memory by the example of the “Unforgettable Butterflies,” three brave sisters from the Dominican Republic burnt in the fire of dictatorship.

The Afghan Conference that begins today in Bonn could prove to be crucial for the future of women in Afghanistan.

Yet there are very few women among the 900 delegates taking part in the talks that mark the anniversary of the 2001 Bonn Conference, when Hamid Karzai was appointed president of Afghanistan and expectations were high about women's futures.

Back in March, when I visited Tunisia and Egypt, I met some remarkable women, who told me that for the first time, they really felt Tunisian or Egyptian, and that they were so proud of what women and men had achieved together. It was a phenomenal time to be in Cairo and Tunis.

The Taliban came once for Fawzia Koofi, and she knows they could come again. This prominent member of parliament - and mother of two - survived a hail of bullets last year.

"It was the Taliban. They kept shooting at my car for half an hour," she said. "But luckily I survived that. For me the threats are more, because I don't like to keep silent".

Recently there has been increased focus on the issue of violence against women. First, Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat (who also heads the Ministerial Committee on the Status of Women) exclaimed during a heated cabinet debate, “Where there's an exclusion of women, violence against women eventually grows.”

On December 5, the international community will gather with Afghan leaders in Bonn, Germany's picturesque Cold War-era capital, for the latest stock-taking of Afghanistan. While some are tempering expectations for the second major conference in Bonn in ten years, Afghan women leaders see an opportunity -- and they're doing everything they can to seize it.

Leaders attending the Bonn Conference on the future of Afghanistan must make an explicit declaration that women's rights will not be negotiated away in any peace deal with insurgent groups, ActionAid said today.

Afghanistan still has a long way to go before women in the country are fully protected under the two-year-old Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law, a report concludes.

Within the 8-month long armed conflict against ethnic groups in Shan and Kachin States, Burma Army soldiers have raped 81 women and girls, of which 36 were killed, the Women's League of Burma (WLB) said.