Two women in Southeast Asia are setting the stage for regional change by bravely standing up to ruling governments. Both have received negative court rulings in recent days.
Human and sexual trafficking in Burma has been pushed up by economic mismanagement and human rights abuses in the military ruled country, a new report said.
Woman and Child Rights Project (WCRP) of the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) in a new report released on Monday said many Burmese children and women are becoming victims of human trafficking because they are left with few alternatives to eke out a living.
Tuesday night, a candidate from the opposition PakatanRakyat (People's Alliance or PR) defeated a candidate from the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition in a semi-rural constituency on mainland Penang. That brought the by-election tally to 7-1 in favour of the PR since the last general election in March 2008.
Last week Freedom House released their "Women's Rights in the Middle East" report, on the state of gender equality in the Muslim Middle East. The report ranked countries based on 45 criteria, combined into five main categories, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Iranian women have pushed the battle for equal rights online even as security forces aggressively monitor the Internet and shut down pro-democracy Web sites that fall out of step with the regime.
"Every print magazine for women we had was closed," Parvin Ardalan said in a recent phone interview from Sweden. "So we created a new world for ourselves in cyberspace."
As one of the first four female lawmakers ever elected to Kuwait's parliament, Aseel al-Awadhi knows she has a tough road ahead in the conservative Gulf state's male-dominated legislature.
President Dwight Eisenhower once called for nations to explore all possible means of using food for peace. We are unfortunately not seeing enough of this today, especially when it comes to Yemen.
TIME Magazine has recognized Afghan women's rights advocate Ms. Suraya Pakzad as one of its top 100 people in 2009. The international news magazine praised Ms. Pakzad, who founded the Voice of Women Organization (VWO) and works in close cooperation with UNIFEM Afghanistan, for her courageous and tireless work in providing Afghan women with shelter, counseling and job training, and raising awareness on gender-based violence in her country.
As one of the first four female lawmakers ever elected to Kuwait's parliament, Aseel al-Awadhi knows she has a tough road ahead in the conservative Gulf state's male-dominated legislature. 