Asia

Parveena Ahangar's unassuming nature and calm demeanour does not betray the pain and agony that the Srinagar-based founder of Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) is going through. Ahangar's son went missing in 1991. “For the last 20 years, I have been moving in and out of districts in Kashmir, with the hope that I will find my son somehow,” she said.

The National Council of Lebanese Women called Thursday for an active participation of women in the upcoming Lebanese cabinet.

Iranian Ambassador Mashallah Shakiri has said that Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) has great role in women development in Pakistan. He was speaking in the campus, after the meeting of Iranian delegation with LCWU's management.

The Kurdish house in Baghdad held on Saturday an educational seminar about Iraqi women and ways to involve them in executive decisions of the Iraqi state and activists in the field of empowerment of women, under the slogan (who is responsible for the absence of women in the Iraqi government).

There are serious concerns about the increase in the number of domestic violence, rape, child abuse and sexual harassment cases.

Statistics from the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre show more than 10,000 such cases were reported to the centre over the past 10 years.

There were 379 rape cases, 8632 domestic violence cases, 318 sexual harassment and 690 cases of child abuse.

Delhi's high court has ordered the capital's government to build shelters for destitute pregnant women so they can receive care when giving birth. It is treating maternal mortality as a human rights violation.

Equal participation and inclusiveness in young people through education and capacity building is the aim of a project led by the Live and Learn Environmental Education.

The project, called 'Building grassroots democracy in Fiji', funded by the European Union, has given 28 communities around Fiji the opportunity to grasp the fundamentals of their human rights.

More than 4,000 incidents of violence against women have happened in nine months last year in Afghanistan, a senior official in Ministry of Women's Affairs said.

Officials in ministry of women's affairs strongly condemned stoning of a newly-wed couple in northern Kunduz province and rape incidents in western Herat province.

Male and female students will be separated at a Tehran university in the upcoming academic year in the latest instance of gender segregation in higher education, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports.

Allameh Tabatabai University President Seyed Sadredin Shariati said the plan would be implemented first in general courses with a large number of students.

The face of women's issues in Lebanon is changing. Young intellectuals in thick Ray-Ban glasses and oversized sweaters, elegant ladies clutching designer purses, Sri-Lankan housekeepers, government representatives as well as foreign exchange students, all came out in force last week to the Metropolis Cinema Sofil, waiting in anticipation for documentaries outlining women's rights in Lebanon to be unveiled.