Her eyes are fixed on the door. Shagufta is waiting round-the-clock for her son to return home. She denies the fact that her wait is never going to end. Nearly five years have passed since her teenaged son was killed. Shagufta is yet to overcome the trauma of his loss. She is still not ready to accept that she has lost her ‘Jimmy’ forever. “It can’t be true that Jimmy is no more, it has to be a lie,” she mumbles.

Kony 2012 was an online video campaign that sought to create awareness and exert pressure on the international community to act against Joseph Kony, leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army which is responsible for the longest running violent struggle in Central Africa. Kony 2012 succeeded in its campaign and in garnering international exposure for the victims of the struggle, but it is accused of portraying the African people as silent witnesses. Several women activists in Africa emphasize that the youth needs to know that Africa is there for them and perhaps this is exactly what will help the campaign against Kony succeed.

Tavleen Singh is an Indian columnist, political reporter and writer. Her latest book ‘Durbar’ is a memoir of her career as a journalist during the time Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were the prime ministers of India. She gives us an insight into the workings of the world’s largest democracy through her travels and the people she met. 

“They use us when they need us.” During the 20-minute-interview with Salma and while watching the hour-long documentary on her life, this one sentence kept haunting me.

In 1971, during Bangladesh’s war of independence, when Pakistani troops had laid siege on the city of Dhaka, one man allegedly gunned down 344 people and raped a young girl. He was Abdul Qader Molla, the man who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal on February 5 this year. Thousands of women and men have gathered to protest against the government’s decision in Shahbag in Dhaka and many more protest demonstrations are being organized abroad by non-resident Bangladeshis in a movement that may just redefine Bangladesh’s identity as a nation.

Simone Umbach, a student of Koblenz University, is only 22 years old, but has already traveled a great deal. From July 2010 to July 2011 she spent one year as a volunteer in Pudupakkam, a village near Chennai. Meike Pohl describes Simone’s experiences.

For women in India to walk with dignity and freedom, a social transformation as well as a change in the values, attitudes and male perceptions of women, by men and women, is needed. Dr. Kanchana Lanzet, member of the board of directors at UN Women in Bonn, gives us an expert opinion on why being a woman in India is so problematic and whether one can really do much about it. This is Dr. Lanzet’s first blog in the series.