One of the greatest challenges to empowering women as agents of change is the gender-based violence women face worldwide. In some countries, gender-based violence impacts as many as 70 percent of women. According to the United Nations, “one out of three women throughout the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.”

Gender-based violence occurs in many forms and can be physical, sexual, or cultural. It is in the home in the form of domestic violence. It is rampant in conflict situations where women are violated and exploited as weapons of war. In the sex trade, women are bought, sold, and abused as cheap, expendable goods. And in some cultures, women are mutilated, forced into child marriages, and denied access to basic rights such as healthcare and education.

On Thursday, August 5 The WIP community had the unique opportunity to participate in a live internet chat with CARE, a leading humanitarian non-governmental organization (NGO) that is working to pass the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) - a landmark piece of bi-partisan U.S. legislation.

John Kerry (D-MA), a lead sponsor of the Senate bill, recently commented, “[I-VAWA] builds on the [Obama] Administration’s focus on women as peace-makers, change-agents, and a crucial investment in the future.”

by Jozefina Cutura and Hope Lozano-Bielat
- USA -

Kristina was at Google before the Internet giant became a household name. She worked as a training specialist for six years, taking pride in her job and enjoying Google’s famously easy-going environment. But with the economy tanking, her division froze hiring, even though the workload kept increasing.

by Katharine Daniels & Sarah McGowan
- USA -

Sunday’s news that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from the Zimbabwean runoff race spurred international media coverage and outrage on a crisis that has been raging for years. According to the opposition’s Movement for Democratic Change, "some 86 of its supporters have been killed and 200,000 forced from their homes by militias loyal to the ruling Zanu-PF party."

• An image from last year's violent police crackdown on Zimbabwean activists. Photograph courtesy of The Zimbabwean. •

WIP Contributors Constance Manika and Lelety Mabasa, along with Sharon Njobo, Grace Kwinjeh and Sandra Nyaira, have published article after article over the past year, outlining the methodical behavior of a political despot who is both cunning and ruthless, and who will stop at nothing to preserve his power.

In our second week of publication, Sharon Njobo (living in exile in Canada) wrote about women in her country taking the lead to protest against Mugabe's economic policies. In this early article we first learned of Zimbabwe's skyrocketing inflation rates (currently at 355,000 percent), and the rising price of basic foodstuffs - putting cooking oil, cornmeal, bread, and milk beyond the reach of many families in a country that was once considered the 'food basket' of Africa. The deteriorating Zimbabwean economy has now earned the country the dubious distinction of having the lowest life expectancy in the world for women. At just 34 years, a woman's life span (37 years for a man) is now half of what it was only 18 years ago.

by Katharine Daniels and Patricia Vásquez
- USA -

Headlines around the world are reporting the news of the shocking yet seemingly inevitable assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi this morning. In Al Jazeera’s report “Daughter of Tragedy,” Kamran Rehmat describes what happened as “An inescapable aspect of the near-Greek tragedy governing the Bhutto family.” He comments that “What ever else the mind-numbing killing of Benazir Bhutto in Thursday’s suicide attack will mean for Pakistan’s future, there is little doubt that politics in this south Asian country will never be the same again.”

Benazir Bhutto was killed just a few miles from the scene of her father's execution 28 years earlier. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former prime minister and the founder of the party that Benazir led, was executed by hanging on charges of conspiracy by the then-military regime. That event motivated Benazir to devote her life to politics.

by Patricia Vásquez and Katharine Daniels
The WIP

On August 7, 2007, The WIP, in its Byline Portal, linked to an outstanding and shocking article, “The Black Sites: A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program” by Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker. Mayer conducted a “major investigative report” amassing interview after interview with C.I.A. analysts and interrogators, with professors, journalists, and Washington insiders. Despite the Bush Administration’s repeated declarations that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed divulged information of tremendous value during his detention, she concludes that the CIA and the US government have been lying both about many of their “successes” in uncovering terrorist networks and crimes, and have been lying to hide the degree to which they have tortured detainees. What a shock.

It’s hard to say which are the most surprising revelations in Mayer’s report. Several of the experts she cites have serious doubts as to whether the notorious captured terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed actually is guilty of killing murdered American journalist Daniel Pearl -- even though Condoleezza Rice herself told Mariane Pearl in 2003 that Mohammed had confessed not only to masterminding that crime, but to the actual beheading of her husband.

by Imelda V. Abaño & Esther Nakkazi
Philippines/Uganda
Reporting from Sydney, Australia

One of the greatest public health failures in the fight against AIDS is the world’s inability to prevent widespread HIV infection among Men who have Sex with Men (MSM), according to officials from the Foundation for Aids Research (amFAR). MSM is the most prominent method of HIV transmission in nearly all Latin American countries, as well as the US, Canada and some Western Europe countries. The roots of this public health failure are denial, discrimination and criminalization.