Asia and the Pacific

Solomon Islands Member of Parliament Hon. Milner Tozaka says he supports reserved seats for women in the national parliament and calls on the government to legislate the proposal before parliament dissolves in September 2014.

Mr Tozaka made these remarks at a recent three-day regional consultation on human rights for members of parliament in Auckland, New Zealand on 15–17 January 2014 organised by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community Regional Rights Resource Team (SPC RRRT).

Both houses of the Afghan Parliament have voted to pass an act that would prohibit relatives from testifying against a criminal defendant in a judicial proceeding. If signed by President Hamid Karzai, the proposed change to the Afghan criminal code would prevent family members from testifying as victims or witnesses in all criminal cases, including domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual assault cases. The act would also ban children and doctors – including those who may have examined victims – from testifying against the accused.

Twenty-seven presidential hopefuls have registered as candidates for Afghanistan's crucial April 5 vote, setting the stage for a wide-open race among former warlords, powerful officials, and several prominent Western-educated technocrats...

A group of Pacific women politicians and leaders have met in Fiji to find ways to boost the number of Pacific women in elected positions.

The Pacific has the lowest number of women in government in the world at just 4-point-7 percent.

Twenty women from seven Pacific Islands states came together for a workshop in Fiji last week, which was organised by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development and the Fiji Women's Rights Movement

Efforts to boost the participation of women in Afghan politics are in serious jeopardy, an IWPR debate has heard.

Noor Mohammad Noor, a spokesman for the Independent Elections Commission (IEC), said that attitudes towards female members of parliament and provincial councillors remained "backward" and that it was proving difficult to change public perceptions.

Addressing more than 20 students from universities in Kabul and Nangarhar, he claimed legislation passed in July last year to reduce the number of provincial council seats reserved for women was a mistake.

More than 50 per cent of candidates nominated by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party in the upcoming provincial and district council elections should be women, a coalition of 12 civil society groups said in a letter on Thursday.