Asia

Human rights abuses remain common across Iraq with the status of women and minority groups on the decline, eight years after the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein, according to a rights watchdog.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) also said in a report released late Monday that journalists face harassment and assault from security forces and politicians, and detainees are regularly abused to coerce confessions.

Iranian Vice-President Fatemeh Bodaqi in a meeting with the Afghan parliament's female lawmakers stressed the necessity for the Muslim societies to improve the position of women to serve as a role model for western countries.

During the meeting in Kabul on Saturday, Bodaqi also lauded Afghan competent women and their constructive presence in social affairs of the country.

On Friday, Egyptians again gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square, this time in a victory celebration, one week after their revolution unseated President Hosni Mubarak. Tunisians have also been sampling new freedoms of speech and press along a boulevard that is no longer a war zone. But even as the exultation lingers, women in both countries have launched new protests. They want to make sure that democracy does not erode their rights.

After several months of controversy and delays in the certification of election results, 249 members have now taken their seats in Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga or lower house of parliament. Among them are Farida Hamidi and Frishta Amini, two women who make up the entire delegation from Nimroz province in the far southwest corner of the country.

Sitting cross-legged on blue velour cushions on the living room floor, the women of the self-help brigade sip green tea, nibble on sugar cookies and report the week's news from the neighbourhood.

Women and girls remain exposed to abusive conditions, says Amnesty.

Indonesian domestic workers, the vast majority of them women and girls, will remain vulnerable to exploitation and abuse unless the country's parliament enacts a Domestic Workers' Law, Amnesty International said today.

Currently, domestic workers do not benefit from many of the legal protections granted to other workers under Indonesian law.

The unstable security situation in Iraq already made women particularly vulnerable. As violence spread across the country, women's mobility and access to the public sphere was dramatically reduced. Still, Iraqi women are doing their best to hold their own. Will opportunities created by and for women be allowed to continue?

More than 50 men employees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Field Office-7 in Cebu City formed themselves into ‘Men Oppose to Violence Against Women Everywhere' (MOVE) DSWD-7 Chapter and distributed over a hundred stickers and flyers on anti-violence against women to public commuters at the North and South bus terminals in Mandaue and Cebu cities, respectively.

In Pakistan, Salman Taseer's assassination in early January has blown the lid off the seething cauldron that has been bubbling in Pakistan for the last several years: the divide between Pakistan's extremist forces and its minority liberal community is now so wide that it seems nothing can bridge the gap anymore. Worse, the extremists greatly outnumber the liberals, endangering whatever advances have been made in the Pakistani society.