Eight years into Pakistan’s democratic transition, violence against women is still endemic, a new ICG report found. The group’s Samina Ahmed talks about why biased attitudes towards women lie at the heart of the problem.

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Women in Bolivia are at higher risk to become victim to violence than elsewhere in Latin America. Read more about what the government has done to protect women and find out which other themes made it to the headlines.

Today, I’m in peace but there was once when my sealed lips and tear-filled eyes pleaded for mercy. My silence questioned my worth, ‘Am I a piece of land sought to be used for purpose?’

Recently, the world marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. But the day with a positive message, started with three awfully disturbing messages.

Islamic extremists stormed a remote boarding school in northeast Nigeria last week and kidnapped 230 girls and young women.

“Soon after drinking my tea, I felt dizzy and dozed off. The next thing I remember is that I was sitting in a police station. They told me, I was drunk and had desecrated the Holy Book, Quran. I was surrounded by a violent mob and people belonging to religious parties were condemning me. No one was listening to my cries. All they wanted was punishment for a crime that I had never committed.”

Everything was a failure that day,” says Jyoti’s companion on that fateful ride. From the taxi drivers who ignored the rules to the police “not working properly,” to the hospital facilities, which were “very poor”, to the indifference of the passers-by. In her last blog in the series on the rape incident that occurred last year in December in India, Dr. Kanchana Lanzet tries to capture the plight of the average Indian citizen.