"Human rights activist and sole Papua New Guinea (PNG) female elected parliamentarian Dame Carol Kidu as dragged by police Saturday while protesting the illegal eviction and partial demolition of Paga Hill Settlement, housing some 2,000 residents.

“Sex work may be illegal in Uganda, but providing services for sex workers is clearly not,” reads a statement from 9 May 2012 by WONETHA, a health and human rights organisation, in response to a serious crack-down on its activities by Ugandan municipal police.

Having become the first country in South America to allow gay couples to marry, Argentina has passed a bill giving transgender citizens the right to have their gender recognised in law.

Under the shade of a tree at an Istanbul cafe, Suzan, a voluptuous woman in her 50s with dyed blond hair and a warm, generous smile, describes how she went from teenage bride to full-time sex worker.

Life isn't easy for the female migrants continually flowing into Istanbul from Turkey's Kurdish region. Those who are illiterate or unable to speak Turkish can face particularly intense isolation from basic services.

It’s one of the biggest online success stories of the decade, attracting a staggering 10 million monthly uniques faster than any site in history. But what makes the rise of the image-sharing Pinterest surprising isn’t its stampeding growth, or its sudden ubiquity on your friends’ Facebook walls. It’s the fact that it’s a raging success story with an unmistakably female bent.

Around 150 organizations and individuals from 40 countries signed on to the letter to Colombian authorities deploring the attacks against Monica Roa and Women’s Link Worldwide.

On May 15 at approximately 1:00 pm, four masked men in a van kidnapped worker rights defender José Enrique Morales Montaño, a member of the Worker Support Centre (CAT) in Puebla, Mexico. 

Minority Rights Group International said on Tuesday that it was deeply concerned about the attack on a mosque by Buddhist mobs in Dambulla, in north Central Sri Lanka, and the subsequent decision by the country’s government to relocate the mosque.