Asia

Shukria Barakzai is a prominent Afghan lawmaker and journalist who has campaigned for media freedom and women's rights in Afghanistan in recent decades. As a journalist, she launched Aina-e-Zan, a newspaper for women's rights, and founded the Afghan Women Journalists Association. During the 1990s, Barakzai stood as a voice of dissent in Afghanistan against the fundamentalist policies of the Taliban regime.

The United Nations says traditional women's rights are being violated across Afghanistan, urging the country's leadership to enforce a recently enacted law aimed at protecting women. U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has released the finding of its report in Kabul on the eve of International Human Rights Day.

Media must play a larger role in empowering women in Lebanon and the wider the Middle East and North Africa region, a chorus of United Nations experts said Tuesday.

The collection of regional experts assembled at the U.N.'s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia headquarters in Downtown Beirut for a two-day conference on improving gender-based equality and promoting regional female participation.

Domestic violence accounts for around half of all reported cases of physical abuse in Lebanon, according to a report released Tuesday.

The “Women's complaints between the Penal Code and the Protection Law,” study was conducted by KAFA (Enough Violence and Discrimination) in the Mount Lebanon region during 2009 and 2010.

On November 25, 2010, Lebanon joined over 55 countries around the world by organising the first White Ribbon Campaign in the Middle East. The campaign carried out by KAFA (enough) Violence & Exploitation, the National Coalition for legislating protection of women from family violence, & Oxfam GB, started on November 25 and will last 16 days.

On Thursday, Samoud Dhamiri al-Yameen was sworn in as the first female magistrate on the Islamic Judicial Council of Palestine.

She will join Supreme Justice Sheikh Yusef al-Da'is of the Supreme Council for Islamic Courts and Major General Adnan Dhamiri, Commissar-General and spokesman for the security establishment.

Vietnam is evaluated as the best performer in Southeast Asia in terms of eradicating gender gap over the past 20 years, said Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.

Female garment workers in Cambodia who have migrated to the capital are more exposed to a risk of HIV infection because of the changes in their social and economic circumstances, a new report claims. The report, published in this month's Women's Studies International Forum journal, looks at the social and economic factors that affect HIV rates among migrant Cambodian garment workers.

Minister for Peace and Reconstruction Rakam Chemjong today said the ministry is formulating a new national action plan with the objective of ensuring women's proportional participation in all peace building processes during and after conflict.

The legacy of the late Philippine President Corazon “Cory” Aquino continues with her inclusion in TIME Magazine's “The 25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century” list.