By Niko Kyriakou

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18, 2005 (IPS) – Advocates of men’s inclusion in gender equality programmes say that even though changing male attitudes is half the battle, women’s groups, U.N. agencies and governments have been slow to integrate men into their work.
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By Niko Kyriakou

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 15, 2005 (IPS) – In Syria and Haiti, a husband can kill his wife for committing adultery and get off scot-free. In Nigeria, men can beat their wives with impunity, so long as native law or custom permits it and they don’t cause “grievous hurt”. In Israel, women cannot divorce without their husband’s consent, and in Guatemala and Lebanon, men can legally kidnap women, provided they marry them afterwards.
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By Niko Kyriakou

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (IPS) – The 49th session of the Commission on the Status of Women’ (CSW) drew to a close Friday with a reaffirmation by the 80 ministers, 1,800 government delegates, seven first ladies and 2,600 non-governmental representatives from around the world who attended that ”women’s rights are human rights”.
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By Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 (IPS) – As the George W. Bush administration tries to influence other nations to endorse its antagonistic views on abortion, feminist scholars and activists from the Arab and Muslim world warn that the U.S. move could cause irreparable damage to their years-long struggle for equality.
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By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 (IPS) – The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), one of the key U.N. bodies monitoring both the progress and lack thereof in the social and economic development of women, has mixed feelings about a much-ballyhooed plan of action adopted at a major U.N. conference in Beijing in 1995.
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By Khalida Khursand

HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb 28, (Pajhwok/IPS) – As delegates gather in New York on Feb. 28 to review progress in the 10 years since the U.N. women’s conference in Beijing, positive news seems to be emerging from Afghanistan.
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By Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 (IPS) – Thousands of women leaders from around the world will gather here next week for a major international assessment of what U.N. member states have done in the past 10 years to ensure equal rights for women in all walks of life.
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By Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jun 11, 2004 (IPS) – Meetings like the Ninth Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which ends Saturday in Mexico, have lost significance because they fail to touch the lives of ”real women, the ones who suffer day after day,” Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú told IPS.
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By Colleen Lowe Morna

JOHANNESBURG Jul 19 (IPS) – ‘The Progress of the World’s Women 2000′ which will be launched by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Harare on Thursday is as informative for what it reveals as for what it fails to reveal due to lack of adequate data.
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BUENOS AIRES, Jun. 23 (IPS) — The municipal legislature of
Argentine capital approved a controversial law aimed at
preventing unwanted pregnancies and deaths from botched
abortions, in a country where an estimated 1,300 pregnancies are
illegally terminated every day. Continue Reading