This article discusses the issue of domestic violence in India. It highlights how patriarchy, in the name of “family values” and “tradition,” is reflected in the recent parliamentary act and the legal system pertaining to domestic violence. Male privilege as a cause in the perpetuation of domestic violence is discussed through both men’s and women’s life cycles. The article highlights possible solutions to the crisis of domestic violence with reference to men’s organizations in some countries that are trying innovative approaches to counter the crisis, and where India can culturally create the space for sensitizing men to the current crisis

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Contemporary Afghanistan provides a good case study for looking at the growing demand for women's rights within a tribal, Islamic and modernizing framework. As was explicated by three Afghan women interviewed at a conference in Italy in 2001, and additional women in Kabul in 2003, human rights for all people in Afghanistan, and specifically for women, can only be ensured through democracy. They believe that democracy can only be ensured through full participation of women in the political process especially when women comprise at least 60 percent of the country's population. In turn, they say that women's political participation is dependent on their economic empowerment and social and physical security. In this article, I emphasize the importance of economic empowerment and social and physical security for Afghan women as the urgent agenda for the international community to be responsible for and to engage in, as a prerequisite to a dialogue on human rights as women's rights. Toward that, this article will delineate the various debates on the human rights discourse, its political complexities, cultural applicability and universality and its ability to translate to women's rights in Afghanistan.---Afghan women, economic empowerment, human rights, women's rights We have become much more aware of the challenges facing women in societies in post-war transition due to recent media attention to geopolitical struggles in Muslim countries, and because of the particular attention that has sporadically been paid to Afghanistan. Journalists, human rights and feminist organizations have focused on the status of women as a way to understand these cultures. Less often heard are the voices of Afghan women themselves. This article developed from interviews with three Afghan women activists at an

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