Asia

But the 26-year-old Honaryar has an additional goal: the Sikh activist aims to become the first non-Muslim woman to gain a parliamentary seat in voting on September 18.

While virtually the entire world has finally aligned on isolating Iran--including, even, Russia and Gulf states--Turkey is obstinately holding out. On Aug. 2 Bloomberg News reported that "Shipments of fuel (to Iran) are now dominated by Turkish and Chinese companies." Meanwhile, the Turkish police have just arrested a refugee former lawyer for the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning.

Almost a year after her election, an Indonesian parliamentarian says getting elected was easy compared to working in a male-dominated legislature. After eight months she has yet to be heard in a general floor debate.

Cambodia has made strides in increasing the number of women in the Parliament in recent years but a redoubling of efforts will be necessary if it is to achieve its target to have 30 percent women in the legislature as set by the Cambodia Millennium Development Goals.

Two weeks after Shas spiritual leader Rav Ovadia Yosef called for God to “smite [Palestinians] with the plague,” his daughter, Rabbanit Adina Bar-Shalom and other women affiliated with Shas met with Palestinian women in a meeting arranged by the Geneva Initiative (GI) on Tuesday in Jerusalem.

Seven prominent Filipino women, all achievers all in their respective fields of endeavor, were featured in a forum on women in power and decision-making roles entitled "The Empowered Filipina".

They don't beg for pity. At home they're boss. They wield a hammer by day and at night cradle their children. These are the women of northern Sri Lanka. Some 15 months after the conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan authorities stopped, these women have become sort of superheroes. With their husbands lost in the fighting, war widows are taking charge of their families and their neighborhoods, too.

“On March 20, Kumari was accused of practicing witchcraft by the villagers, and was mercilessly beaten up and forced to eat her own excreta in public,” said the Asian Human Rights Commission in an urgent April 2009 appeal letter to Nepal's leading legislators. During the incident the local police did not come to Kumari's aide.

Peace Mothers came together in İstanbul Galatasaray Square before sending the postcards to President Abdullah Gül, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Chief of Defence Staff Işık Koşaner to demand consideration of bringing military operations to an end.

By Ruwayda Mustafah Rabar