The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Report 2007 was launched on Monday, July 2nd 2008 at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) session in Geneva, Switzerland. The report highlights the progress made in gender equality and women's political participation.

The 2nd New Arab Woman Forum will be held on 23-24 October 2008 in Beirut, Lebanon, as a follow-up to the First New Arab Woman Forum held in Dubai in 2007, where the position of Arab women and the challenges that they faced were the main issues debated during the event.

UN officials at the International AIDS conference in Mexico this week said that the current world food crisis and increasing food costs will have a negative impact on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, as poor women are driven to engage in transactional sex.