News stories by Julia Kallas

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 03 (IPS) - For the estimated 140 million girls and women living with the consequences of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), it is already too late. But since a global ban on FGM was passed at the end of last year, activists hope many more will now escape this brutal practice.

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 12 (IPS) - Today, approximately 125 countries have laws that penalise domestic violence - a great advance from a decade ago. Yet 603 million women around the world still live in countries where domestic violence is not a crime, and up to seven in ten women are targeted for physical or sexual violence, or both.

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 02 (IPS) - When Shorai Chitongo founded Ray of Hope, a support group for female survivors of domestic violence in 2005, she discovered that three-quarters of the survivors in the group were HIV-positive.

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 01 (IPS) - On World AIDS Day, the fact that the number of children newly infected with HIV continues to decline is welcome news to UNITAID, the International Drug Purchase Facility hosted by the World Health Organisation.  But UNITAID is also well aware of how much more remains to be done for  children already living with the disease.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 24 (IPS) - Violence against women is internationally recognised as a threat to democracy, a burden on national economies, and a serious human rights violation.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 (IPS) - Khadija Ismayilova has been threatened with blackmail by her own government. She has been branded an "enemy of the state", mainly for her exposés of official corruption.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 26 (IPS) - A new study confirms what many Iraqi doctors have been saying for years – that there is a virtual epidemic of rare congenital birth defects in cities that suffered bombing and artillery and small arms fire in the U.S.-led attacks and occupations of the country.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 (IPS) - In 1994, genetically modified produce, in the form of tomatoes, first appeared in grocery stores in the United States. Numerous other types of produce have been genetically modified since, and consuming them has become common practise. But because the phenomenon is so recent, the long-term effects of eating such foods remain unknown.