Asia

Women activists from South Asian countries have emphasised upon a greater role for women in peace building measures in conflict-ridden regions.

Women's rights in Afghanistan are once again under threat after 10 years of progress, two leading British aid agencies have said. Oxfam and Action Aid said on Monday many Afghan women were worried that the impending international troop withdrawal, coupled with an on-going effort to secure a political deal with the Taliban, could undermine their future.

A workshop to help rural communities know how to prevent violence against women is currently underway.

More than 30 women and men leaders from villages of Western, Malaita and Guadalcanal provinces are in Honiara this week.

The week long workshop aims to help these men and women understand the work of different organizations working to prevent violence against women.

Human rights activists are reporting an increased incidence of rape against Kachin women in areas of recent military attacks by government forces in northern Myanmar.

In Kachin State alone, at least 18 cases of rape - sometimes aggravated with murder - were documented over an eight-day period in June by the Kachin Women's Association of Thailand (KWAT), following renewed fighting between government and Kachin forces.

India ranks at 141 among 165 countries analyzed by Newsweek magazine in the treatment of women.

The speakers at a South Asian conference here on Thursday called for a collective struggle and structural reforms to end violence against women in all the countries in the region. The conference marked the shift in women's struggle against violence, where the silence against violence had been broken but redressing mechanism for survivors was yet to be evolved.

The tri-lateral women's group, consisting of Palestinian women, Israeli women and female political leaders from around the world, was founded in 2005 under the auspices of UNIFEM in New York. Its mission was to implement and strengthen U.N.

1. Facts:

Small arms:
Small Arms mean the weapons that a single and individual can carry and operate. For example revolvers, self loading pistols, rifles, carbines, assault rifles, sub machineguns, light machineguns and associated ammunitions[1]

Researchers and practitioners on violence against women (VAW) from all over South Asia gave country presentations and discussed legal structures established and practised in their respective countries on the first day of South Asian Conference on violence against inaugurated here on Thursday.

Women's rights have been central to the war in Afghanistan. Remember when Cherie Blair and Laura Bush joined forces to bolster the rationale for invasion back in 2001? Suddenly, the west developed a passionate concern for the position of women in the country; there were films, books and documentaries about the high rates of maternal mortality, girls being married off young and low levels of female literacy.