Amy Lieberman is a journalist based in New York City, where she reports on human rights, social issues and the environment for a range of news outlets.
Puebla is one of many Mexican states where discrimination based on gender orientation is not considered a crime. Many transgenders who live here describe their efforts to leave. And how they wound up giving up.
Few female immigrants have enjoyed the benefit of the travel ban on people with HIV lifted three years ago Financial hardships, fear of stigma in their homelands and uncertainties about their U.S. legal status all block the way.
Contestants are called ambassadors and expected to understand the workings of the U.N. and have a good roster of civic involvements. The problem is, the U.N. wants nothing to do with it.
As the U.N. superagency loses its founding leader, participants at the Commission on the Status of Women expect the fight between conservative and progressive factions to intensify over sexual orientation, reproductive rights and even domestic violence.
Traditional leaders adjudicate household violence and land inheritance for the majority of rural women in the developing world. Increasingly, human rights activists want them to give women a better shake.
The women who gather on these two street corners of New York are looking for day work as housekeepers. The territory comes with harassment and haywire scheduling. Hurricane Sandy blew a different type of cleanup work their way, but only a few dare to give it a try.
The new U.N. point person on sexual violence in armed conflict doesn't plan to do it on her own. Zainab Bangura, a former health minister from Sierra Leone, is tapping governments to work alongside her nine-person staff.
Leaders of the international tribunal for Sierra Leone-known for its focus on gender-based crimes-are struggling to keep it open through the appeals trial of Liberia's Charles Taylor.
Mariane Pearl, an internationally-known journalist, is a leading figure in the first ever celebration of the International Day of the Girl Child. In an interview, the 45-year-old mother of one spotlights education as the most important goal.
The U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women's issues was upbeat last week about high-level attention to sexual violence at a U.N. meeting. But Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee was disappointed that African leaders weren't in the room.