Asia

Working women have added their voices to the clamor for the passage of the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, amid strong opposition from the Catholic Church.

In a press release, the Partido ng Manggagawa said the bill is “critical given the impact of the global financial crisis on working people and the poor, especially women.”

Publishing a finding on sexual violence during the conflict period, Advocacy Forum and International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) have urged the government authorities to formulate programmes and policies to improve the conditions of conflict-hit women in Nepal.

As World AIDS Day is commemorated across the globe today, health officials in Indonesia are warning of a worrying increase in the number of young women contracting the virus, particularly through sexual violence.

In 1989, women accounted for just 2.5 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS in the country, according to the National Commission on AIDS (KPAN). By 2009, however, they made up 25.5 percent of cases.

Within the framework of a visit to Kazakhstan for participation in the OSCE Summit UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will meet with a group of women of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - participants of regional initiative " Women for peace and security in Central Asia, the Ferghana Valley region"; the UNDP press service informs of it.

Last week, Lebanese women's rights activists launched a 16-day campaign to push parliament to pass new legislation to protect women from violence inside their homes.

According to the activists, there are currently now laws in the country specifically designed to protect women from domestic violence. Activists said at the launching of the campaign that rarely are perpetrators brought to justice.

The abuse of women has been going on for centuries and it is often the case that a woman is killed before the problem is taken seriously. The United Nations Fund for the Development of Women (UNIFEM), recently launched an initiative to improve the safety and welfare of women in five major cities: New Delhi (India), Cairo (Egypt), Quito (Ecuador), Kigali (Rwanda), and Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea).

Bangladesh is historically and traditionally a highly patriarchal society. All the processes, values and institutions that are associated with the construction of the country are gendered. The institutions and values of this gendered state always privilege masculinity.

Amnesty International takes the opportunity of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women to join with activists in Japan to call on the government of Japan to provide justice for the survivors of Japan's World War II military sexual slavery system.

Women are still “mainly construed as clichés of sexual attraction to be shown on television,” Information Minister Tarek Mitri said Thursday in his opening address at this year's New Arab Woman Forum (NAWF).

The two-day, forum in Beirut is seen by female activists as an opportunity to assess the progress made in championing women's rights, while addressing the various obstacles that continue to impede change.

A pioneering research project and report commissioned by the Kurdistan Regional Government on honour-based violence was launched in Erbil on November 25, the international day for the elimination of violence against women.

The two-year research project was commissioned in 2008 by the then prime minister Nechirvan Barzani to investigate honour-based violence in Kurdistan and among the Kurdish community in Britain.