World's Women Work to Find a Better Way. [CNN International] In Africa, 40 first ladies have banded together to use their positions to fight HIV and AIDS. In Kandahar, Afghanistan, an American former reporter is running a cooperative that employs both women and men to produce a line of soaps and bath oils that will eventually wind up in U.S. and Canadian stores. Similar efforts to empower female survivors of wars and genocide are under way in dozens of other countries, thanks to organizations like the U.S.-based Women for Women International.

The Parade of the Sickly. [New York Times] If fashion models were purebred dogs instead of underfed women, there would be an outcry over the abusive standards for appearing in shows and photo shoots.  The prize for women who aspire to the catwalk is a ridiculous size 0, though overachieving undereaters seem to be reaching for size 00, which invites further starvation, serious illness and worse. The industry got a wake-up call last month when Luisel Ramos, and Uruguayan model who had been advised to lose weight, died of heart failure after taking her turn on the catwalk. She reportedly had gone days without eating, and for months consumed only lettuce and diet soda.

Report: Nations Are Not Sufficiently Preventing Widespread Violence Against Women. [The Associated Press] Nearly 60 percent of women in Ethiopia are subject to sexual violence by a partner. Domestic violence and rape account for 19 percent of disease in women in developed countries. And in Colombia, a woman is killed by an intimate partner every six days, a study from the United Nations said. Violence against women persists at high rates around the world, and governments are not doing enough to prevent it, according to the report from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Violence Against Women a Global Problem. [Press Trust of India] In most of the world, 29% to 62% of women have suffered physical or sexual violence at the hands of an intimate partner. More often than not, the violence is severe. For half of these women, the abuse continues. The appalling numbers come from a remarkable study led by World Health Organization researchers Claudia Garcia-Moreno, MD; Henrica A.F.M. Jansen, PhD; and colleagues. The researchers trained a small army of more than 500 female interviewers who met with more than 24,000 15-to 49-year-old women at 15 sites in 10 countries.

UN: New Report Says Violence Against Women is a Human Rights Issue. [Reuters AlertNet, UK] Human Rights Watch and the Center for Women's Global Leadership welcomed a report issued by UN that classifies abuse against women - whether it happens in the home or elsewhere - as a human rights violation. As such, states are obliged by international human rights standards to hold perpetrators accountable. The 140-page report entitled "In-depth study on all forms of violence against women" confirms that violence against women by spouses, family members, and employers is a human rights violation, settling any outstanding debate on this issue. By squarely stating that it is, the report says that governments have an obligation to protect women whether the perpetrators are state or non-state actors. 

Targeting the Female Body for Censorship. [The News-Press] There are many ironies that can be derived from this act of censorship. First of all, there is the irony of a Cuban artist not being able to be with us for the exhibition. She could not procure a visa due to the lack of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba; a country we label terrorist and repressive, where censorship abounds. The other irony is that Pavón’s work focuses on so many dimensions of the female body — the female body mistreated, the female body used as a bull’s-eye for target practice — two abuses exercised by censoring its display at a public space. The third irony is the fact that the artist’s approach to the female body is in itself ironic. In Pavón’s own words, “My images are reflections of others’ lives, the door to an imaginary world, less sophisticated, more interested in what exists inside. The nudity of my bodies represents the bareness of the soul.”

Women Journalists From Lebanon, China and US Are Honored. [Voice of America] The International Women's Media Foundation presented three Courage in Journalism Awards this week at a ceremony in New York. One went to May Chidiac, a Lebanese broadcaster who survived a bomb attack last year. Another went to Gao Yu, a Chinese journalist who was jailed for six years. And the third went to American reporter Jill Carroll who was held by kidnappers in Iraq.