Telling the truth has allowed her to push for the passage of no fewer than seven pieces of legislation in Oregon and has helped untold numbers of sexual assault survivors. She has routinely been interviewed and has spoken at dozens of colleges across the country.

While the technology itself is not faulty, some experts question the usability of panic buttons. In India, women—the target demographic for panic button usage—are 36% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man, according to GSMA, a worldwide mobile operators network. In the hinterlands, this disparity is even wider with only 12% of women using a phone. This is especially worrisome since between Jan. 01, 1984 and Dec. 31, 2009, almost 80% of rapes were committed in rural areas.

Somaliland's speaker of parliament, Bashe Mohamed Farah, told the BBC that rape cases have risen and he hoped the new law would help stop that trend. "Nowadays we have seen even people carrying out gang rapes," he said. "The main emphasis of the new act is to completely stop rape." The new law has come in after years of lobbying by children and women's rights advocates.

All societies make necessary moral distinctions between high crimes and misdemeanors, mortal and lesser sins. A murderer is worse than a thief. A drug dealer is worse than a user. And so on. Gillibrand, Driver and others want to blur such distinctions, on the theory that we need a zero-tolerance approach. That may sound admirable, but it’s legally unworkable and, in many cases, simply unjust. It’s also destructive, above all to the credibility of the #MeToo movement. Social movements rarely succeed if they violate our gut sense of decency and moral proportion.

How can these women who live at the proverbial intersection of race and sexism, who grew up crossing that corner, ever be a part of the national #MeToo conversation when they can’t be heard in their own community? The intersection of race, class, sexism and power is dangerous, and the most vulnerable women among us must navigate it alone.

Giving in to the demands of protesters who took to the streets across India, the government brought in a tougher new law to deal with crimes against women. But the biggest change has been the one in attitudes - sexual attacks and rapes have become topics of living room conversations and that is a huge deal in a country where sex and sex crimes are a taboo, something to be brushed under the carpet, not discussed at length.

The use of rape by Myanmar's armed forces has been sweeping and methodical, The Associated Press found in interviews with Rohingya Muslim women and girls now in Bangladesh. They were interviewed separately, come from a variety of villages in Myanmar and now live spread across several refugee camps in Bangladesh. Yet their stories were hauntingly similar. The military has denied its soldiers raped any Rohingya women.

John Magufuli made the pardon in his independence day speech on Saturday. Singer Nguza Viking, known as Babu Seya, and his son Johnson Nguza, known as Papii Kocha, were pardoned for raping 10 primary schoolgirls. Tanzanian girls risking rape for an education The president selected a group of prisoners to be released, who he said had corrected their behaviour.

A number of activists and members of Morocco’s civil society recently launched a campaign on both social media and public spaces in raise awareness of what they say is a rising problem of sexual harassment against women in the North African country. The campaign launched on Saturday called on both government officials and citizens to confront the issue by using the slogan “Do not harass me, the public transportation is for you and me”. The event was launched in conjunction with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

The softening of the rules means the difference between real and reported violence has grown, she adds. Victims don’t have access to police protection while their complaint is being processed and they have lost their right to appeal police negligence in handling their cases. According to Anna Donich, the head of a crisis center for women in Irkutsk, just two percent of domestic violence victims see their attackers brought before a judge. Since February, she says, that number has dropped further and it is getting harder for victims to get the authorities on their side. “Police are asking victims for more proof,” Donich says. “Only female police officers end up helping them.”

In South Korea, they're in about 50 different parks and public spaces. But Japan wants these statues to come down. Some in the country's ruling party have questioned whether the war-era imperial government was really involved in the sex slave program — or, as they contend, the women volunteered.

The pink slips of paper ask: “Have you ever experienced violence or harassment? What happened?” while another reads: “As a woman, where do you feel safe?” “They don’t have to write anything but their experience,” said Mayer. “As an art piece, it’s more symbolic, it’s not a sociological survey.”