Asia

Indonesia is enjoying a period of relative peace and calm as the violent conflicts that wracked the country at the dawn of the country's democratic transition have been resolved, for the most part peacefully.

A coalition of Afghan war crimes victims is lobbying against the Afghanistan Peace Jirga and the Afghanistan government's effort to begin a reconciliation process with the Taliban and other insurgents. The Afghanistan Peace Jirga, which took place early last week, brought together approximately 1,600 delegates from around Afghanistan to discuss building peace and the motives of insurgency groups.

Lying on his hospital bed in Andijan, in eastern Uzbekistan, 65-year-old Khikmatullo Urunbayev, an ethnic Uzbek grandfather from Osh, in southern Kyrgyzstan, had tears in his eyes as he lifted his arm for us to see.

An aid ship transporting medical supplies to Gaza will leave Lebanon in the coming days with dozens of women activists on board, one of the organizers told AFP on Tuesday.

"We are all independent women who believe in breaking the siege on Gaza and are committed to the enmity of the Zionist entity," said Samar Hajj, who is coordinating the trip.

The United Nations and civil society today said today that woman participation in decision-making levels was a must to avert violence against women in conflict and post-conflict settings and that the state should provide, without delay, the victims with adequate multi-sectoral responses and justice.

The Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Assistance to Pakistan, Jean-Maurice Ripert, met with representatives from women's peace organizations in Islamabad on 15 June, on the occasion of the Global Open Day for Women and Peace. The meeting aimed to build dialogue on the implementation in Pakistan of Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, as its 10th anniversary is coming up in October.

Some 400,000 people have been displaced by ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, the United Nations announced Thursday, dramatically increasing the official estimate of a crisis that has left throngs of desperate, fearful refugees without enough food and water in grim camps along the Uzbek border.

The Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Nepal, Karin Landgren, and the acting UN Resident Coordinator, Gillian Mellsop, received women peace activists at the Centre for Constitutional Dialogue in Kathmandu on 11 June, for a discussion on women's participation in the peace process in Nepal.

Navruza, 14, seems calm but her eyes are full of sorrow. Along with her mother and two brothers, she managed to escape deadly clashes in the town of Osh, in southern Kyrgyzstan, and find refuge across the border in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

The Burmese communities living in different parts of the world have started coordinated demonstrations against the military controlled election in their country.