We watch now with absolute disbelief as, once more, the courage of the monks and people of Burma are flashed across our television screens. They reject the brutal dictatorship of the junta and call ...

This year marks almost the halfway point in the 15-year time-span set in 2000 for the world to realize eight ambitious targets, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Still a millennium aw...

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize, shared between Al Gore and the UN’s climate science panel, is a victory for environmentalism and science. It underscores the gravity of global warming and leaves no sp...

Pinky Bhutto—Benazir’s school nickname in Karachi—is coming back. Will she become prime minister of Pakistan a third time? Will three be the lucky number allowing her to complete a full term? Will a...

Consider these two images from recent news events: 20,000 monks marching past Burmese Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s home to protest the democracy leader’s 11-year house arrest and the country’s ...

Yes, this slight, shy girl talking with me in the schoolyard killed four people. The rebel soldiers had given her the dictum so many warrior Ugandan children live under: “Kill, or we will kill you.” She tells her story in a rapid-fire, hushed monotone—as if rushing to deliver a memorized passage from a tale too awful to really think about. And that it is. She is only now 16 years old: as an 11-year-old soldier she killed grown men. I don’t give her name because life is still too dangerous for her. Abducted from her school by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as a small child, she is now rebuilding her life in northern Uganda—a student at a boarding school for girls in Kitgum, near the Sudanese border. In the run of her life, she managed to escape from the brutality of the rebel army only to return to her village to find her parents dead.

The brutal killings of 400 women began mysteriously in 1993 and continued until about 2005. Or so we thought. In early 2007, National Public Radio’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro found still more recent ...

He announced in Tagalo: “This is serious. You are with the Taliban.” The roomful of people at the airport in Manila glanced at us askance. I wished that the Taliban would discover the Philippines gove...

During the long days of the rape and murder court-martial of Sgt. Jesse Spielman at Fort Campbell where I was reporting a story for the Women’s Media Center website—I was struck by the language I was hearing and the apparent meaning of the words.

A third soldier, Private Jesse Spielman, 23, was sentenced Saturday night to 110 years in prison after being convicted Friday of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Rasheed Al-Janabi. However, like Sergeant Paul Cortez and Specialist James Barker, who were also convicted in the case, Spielman will, says the Associated Press, be eligible for parole after only 10 years in prison.

The children of the troops serving in Iraq are experiencing significant collateral damage at home, according to two staggering new reports on the occurrence of child maltreatment, neglect, and abuse...

According to testimony at his court-martial, which began Monday at Fort Campbell, Private Jesse Spielman went with Sergeant Paul Cortez, Specialist James Barker and Private Steven Green on March 12, 2006, to the home of the Al-Janabi family in a village south of Baghdad. He watched while they raped 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Rasheed Al-Janabi and murdered her and her family.

One late evening earlier this month in New York’s Central Park, Mia Farrow sat on the stage of the Delacorte amphitheater, her trademark blond hair loose to her shoulders on either side of her face....

The largest ever demonstration for the rights of women in the United States took place the spring of 2004 when slightly over a million people marched in Washington, D.C. This spring women’s rights s...

With concern over climate change, the sun promises a clean and renewable energy source, which those of us in rich countries often associate with expensive photovoltaic panels for generating electric...

Bushra Jamil, co-founder of Radio Al Mahaba, the first and only independent women’s radio station in the Middle East, has questions. Lots of them. “Why on earth would America come in and get rid o...

I remember like it was yesterday. Every time I would act out one of my mischievous schemes, my mother and father would quickly remind me of their sacrifice. “We came here with two suitcases—that’s i...

Dua Khalil is stoned to death in Iraq for being seen with a man of another religion. A woman is shot dead in Jordan after her photo appears on her brother’s friend’s cellphone. Muqadas Bibi’s throat...

“Since you decided to rule the whole world,” a Lebanese TV journalist challenged her American audience, “you should know more about us.”

This month nearly 2,000 government delegates and representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) met in New York for the UN Fifteenth Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-15). After...

Left or right? Woman or man? Ségolène or Sarkozy? These are the choices facing French voters when they take to the polls for the second and final round of the presidential election on Sunday, May 6....

When speaking to Americans, Yanar Mohammed is confronted repeatedly with the belief that Iraqi women’s rights are protected under occupation by the United States. In reality, says Mohammed, director...

In the years following World War II, we are in what legal scholar Eric Yamamoto has called a global “Age of Reparations.” Yet reparations claims and settlements have until recently ignored harms uniquely experienced by women.

When Pushpita Alam began interviewing candidates for a fellowship program in Bangladesh teaching working-class women to be journalists, she looked for personal strength and the determination to exce...

The account below is compiled from testimony given at the courts martial of Paul Cortez and James Barker, from accounts of the Article 32 Hearing and other court proceedings in the cases, and from previous WMC and newspaper reports. Former Pfc. Steven Green, Pfc. Jesse Spielman and Pfc. Bryan Howard are still awaiting trial. References to them are to alleged actions on their part according to the above sources.