Gender

By Roxana Saberi

DUSHANBE, Nov 15 (IPS) - Women have played important roles in rebuilding Tajikistan after the country's civil war of the 1990s. But women in this central Asian country still have many obstacles to overcome to reach equality with men, according to some local activists and international observers.

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 (IPS) - A 113-page landmark U.N. study on gender violence says women continue to be victims of sexual harassment, human trafficking and blatant discrimination worldwide.

"Violence against women persists in every country in the world as a pervasive violation of human rights and a major impediment to achieving gender equality," says the first-ever in-depth report on gender violence released Monday by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

   By Zofeen T Ebrahim

KARACHI, Pakistan, Jun 15 (AMF) -  Hasan Zaidi likes to look at the brighter side of life. Little wonder then that he views the most heated and animated debate going on on one of the many Pakistani private television on the Hudood Ordinances - a controversial set of laws based on Islamic decrees criticised as being anti-women -- as heralding good tidings.

   By Ashfaq Yusufzai, Asia Media Forum

Fears of HIV/AIDS rattle a rural backwater on the Pakistan-Afghan border: Marikhel village.

   At least two labourers died from AIDS there in the past  year. Both had been deported HIV-positive from the United Arab Emirates.

   By Wahidullah Amani

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov 29 (Institute for War and Peace Reporting) - The well-publicised case of a magazine editor jailed for blasphemy could soon take a more ominous turn, with a state prosecutor threatening to press for the death penalty.

CALLS for Stories for AMF Series: ASIA and HIV/AIDS

Home to more than 8 million people living with HIV/AIDS, Asia faces a wide range of challenges in tackling the pandemic -- and its various aspects relating not just to health and science, but to development, access to medicine and human rights, economics, policy, gender, religion and culture, among others.

By Qurratul Ain Tahmina, IPS

DHAKA, Jul 27 - A vibrant women's rights movement in Bangladesh has much on its plate -- an ominous scale of violence against women, omnipresent social and religious prejudices and poor representation in decision-making despite two women heading the government consecutively for the last 15 years.

The Kathmandu Post
May 31, 2005

KATHMANDU - Press Council Nepal needs to revise its code of ethics so as to make itself gender sensitive, and it should also develop specific gender guidelines for media practitioners to mainstream gender in media, said a media monitoring report released recently.

Staff Correspondent, The Daily Star
Apr 22, 2005

DHAKA: Speakers at a meeting yesterday said despite women's empowerment in many spheres, their participation in the decision making process is still absent.