Women's Day?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. Women have come far, but in too many spots on the planet have much further to go.

Mothers in Iraq pimp their daughters

That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price. The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. "The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it's like the trade in cattle," Hinda says. "I've seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters."

One step forward and two steps back in Afghanistan.

On the same day an Afghan female lawmaker announced her candidacy for Afghanistan's presidency, an impoverished widow seeking to escape a life of despair set herself on fire.

African Women continue to struggle against abuse and genocide.

Ban recalled a young woman he met on his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who was "brutally and violently abused by four soldiers at gunpoint" in eastern Congo while fleeing fighting that destroyed her village.

"She is now at the Heal Africa hospital in Goma, suffering not only from her physical injuries but from being ostracised by her village and family from a false sense of shame", he said.