After Half a Century, Women Head to the Polls

For 70-year-old Ghulam Fatima, the upcoming general elections on May 11 promise to be unlike any she has witnessed before in Pakistan.

Hamas ‘Talibanising’ Gaza

The Islamist resistance group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is being accused by its Palestinian Authority (PA) rivals in the West Bank of Talibanising Gaza and turning the coastal territory into a new Muslim Brotherhood neighbourhood.

U.N. Task Force Purges Stigmas on Sexual Rights

Ishita Chaudhry spent the past 36 hours listening to U.N. delegates discuss population growth and development. She noticed that on “controversial” topics, such as sexual and reproductive rights, young people’s voices often get lost.

Kyrgyzstan Officials Taking Cultural Right Turn

Authorities at Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture want to ban a play that discusses domestic abuse and sexual violence because it “promotes scenes that destroy moral and ethical standards and national traditions of the peoples of Kyrgyzstan.”

Uruguay – Second Country in Latin America to Adopt Gay Marriage

Activists in Uruguay hope the passage of the “Equal Marriage Law” Wednesday will help bring about recognition that society is heterogeneous.

Daring Woman Enters the Contest

“My sole motive is to serve my people, especially women who have had no role in politics so far. I feel we can make progress only by bringing in women into mainstream politics.”

Water Shortage Hits Pacific Women

The Solomon Islands, a developing island nation in the south-west Pacific Islands, has one of the highest urbanisation rates in the region, and the basic service infrastructure is struggling to cater for the influx of people from the provinces to the capital, Honiara. Thirty-five percent of the city’s population, who live in informal settlements, are facing the health consequences of a dire shortage of clean water and sanitation.

Q&A: Leaving Youth on the Streets Creates a ‘Social Disaster’

For homeless youth, life on the streets is brutal. They experience sky-high rates of mental health problems, substance abuse and sexual assault. But despite the fact that it costs just under 6,000 U.S. dollars to permanently end homelessness for one youth, too little is being done to help them.

Women Take the Stage Against Taliban

The Taliban may have placed a ban on theatre, but women in Pakistan’s northern provinces won’t allow the threat of the militants’ reprisals to keep them off the stage.

Women Make Flowers Pay

In Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, women are taking the lead in developing a burgeoning floriculture industry. At the same time, their enterprise is contributing to community resilience as rapid urbanisation exceeds employment opportunities and challenges the economic wellbeing of many urban families.

Women Long to Work in Peace

Shaken by the brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman in the national capital New Delhi last December, the female workforce in India is calling for more concrete measures for the protection of female employees from both physical and non-physical attacks.

U.S. High Court in Hot Seat over Same-Sex Marriage

On the second day of oral arguments in two different cases involving the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed serious doubts about the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which codifies the non-recognition of same-sex marriage for federal and inter-state purposes.

U.S. Congress Inches Away from the Straight and Narrow

Even as the issue of gay marriage continues to make waves in the U.S., change is inexorably arriving in the halls of power, with a record seven openly homosexual or bisexual members of the new U.S. Congress.

Discord Now Strikes Male Bands in Kashmir

The girl band in Kashmir was silenced; the male bands are running into fears of another kind of silence.