A new initiative by fashion brand Diesel to improve working conditions and to provide free abortion pills to its female factory workers could have been an appropriate gesture by Diesel.

The head of the United Nations entity mandated to promote gender equality today said that her priority this year is to enhance the economic empowerment and political participation of women and called for the support of the international community and the entire UN system to ensure success.

Four men have been given an 18-year jail sentence for stabbing and stoning Zoliswa Nkonyana, a 19 year old openly gay woman from Khayelitsha, a small village near Cape Town.

By Mona Alami

Odette Klysinska, a Catholic French native, sits in her living room in an affluent neighbourhood in Beirut, clutching her will in one hand, shocked to learn that it is no longer legally valid in the country she now calls home.

Times are getting harder for women seeking abortions, advocates say, even though this month marked the 39th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Last week, tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo on the one-year anniversary of the 2011 revolt. With Islamists winning nearly half of the seats in Parliament recently, some Iranian women caution their Egyptian counterparts to learn from their revolution, after which they say they lost rights with the formation of an extreme Islamic state.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Zimbabwe. The Observatory has been informed by reliable sources about the repression of a peaceful demonstration organised by Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), a civic movement that defends women's rights and freedoms in Zimbabwe, and the arrest of eight of its members, including Ms. Jennifer Williams, National Coordinator.

On 3 February 2012, human rights defender Ms Norma Andrade was attacked by an unknown assailant in the south of Mexico City. Norma Andrade is the founder of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa – NHRC (May Our Daughters Return Home). Her human rights work focuses on fighting for justice for the victims of femicide and their families in the State of Chihuahua.

The Committee for Missing and Detained Persons in Honduras (Cofadeh), has expressed it’s concern for the security and wellbeing of Gilda Carolina Silvestrucchi, Journalist and Director for the past 10 and a half years of the Radio Program ‘En la Plaza’, who has been the victim of grave threats on her life, and on the lives of her small children.