Every year more than half a million women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The World Health Organization, WHO, estimates that 15% of all pregnant women will develop direct obstetric complications. The target of reducing maternal mortality by 75% by 2015 is a key UN Millennium Development Goal.
IRIN Web Special on violence against women and girls during and after conflict. The term gender-based violence is used to distinguish violence that targets individuals or groups of persons on the basis of their gender from other forms of violence. Gender-based violence includes acts such as rape, torture, mutilations, sexual slavery, forced impregnation and murder. During conflict, violence aganist women becomes an excepted norm while militarisation and the increased presence of weapons result in high levels of brutality and even greater levels of freedom or exemption from punishment. In this special there are articles on rape as a tool of war, UN peacekeeping, war and women's health, interviews and special reports from Angola, Burundi, Liberia, Tajikistan, Congo and Sudan.