violence against women

Unilever, in partnership with Oxfam, announced the launch of a program to enhance women’s livelihoods in three southern border provinces in Thailand.

Twenty leading international and Afghan NGOs today called on NATO and the Afghan government to agree to commitments to ensure Afghan National Security Forces are able to protect civilians and are held accountable if they commit abuses or violate international law.

Over the last few years Oxfam has been following closely the reform of the UN’s gender equality architecture and most recently, the establishment of UN Women.

An Oxfam-commissioned survey reveals that sixty percent of rape victims were gang raped. More than half of the assaults took place in their own homes. There has also been a shocking increase in the number of civilian rapists.

Afghanistan’s next government must urgently devote greater resources to building up to 6,000 new schools, training upwards of 5,000 new midwives and professionalizing the police force to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans, aid agencies working in Afghanistan said today.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is on a high-level European lobbying tour to highlight the situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where civilians have experienced an upsurge of violence in recent months.