“Mary” was nine years old when her childhood abruptly ended. Three men fed her sedatives then raped her. Her mother, who had been washing clothes in a stream near their home in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, got home to find her child lying on the ground distraught, her legs and dress stained with blood.

Fatima was gang-raped during attacks on Rohingya Muslims as part of Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, she and her family live in a camp in Bangladesh with few prospects, DW Editor-in-Chief Ines Pohl reports.

Last year, an  image of five extraordinary women, dubbed the “Silence Breakers”, was plastered on the cover of TIME magazine and seen by millions around the world. Selected as the face of the “MeToo” movement to break the silence about sexual harassment,TIME’s “person” of the year 2017 was five people Ashley Judd, Susan Fowler, Adama Iwu, Taylor Swift and Isabel Pascual.

In an interview with DW, Indian feminist V. S. Elizabeth says that although the global #MeToo movement had an impact on India, it is still restricted to the educated middle class with an access to the Internet.

At the close of 2017, I was asked to research a Top 10 list of African women who had made an impact with regard to women’s rights that year was as excited as a kid in a candy store and was super confident that I would produce a forceful article featuring several legendary female African activists- I mean how rare and how cool would such an article be? I was so sure that I would construct my list in no time.

A recent series of gruesome rapes and murders has sparked outrage in northern India. The incidents are the latest for a region with a grim history of violence against women. Murali Krishnan reports from New Delhi.

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Mediha felt like the “Islamic State” had stripped her of her identity

While the “Islamic State” (IS) has lost most of its cities in Iraq and Syria, thousands of Yazidis it kidnapped are still missing. Activists say some are being hidden within IS families. Judit Neurink reports from Irbil.