It provides facts and realities of the dramatic situation faced by women g athered by the ICRC from women themselves. Because it is based largely on the ICRC's own field experience from operations in many parts of the world, the information is both extensive and credible.

The study reveals how women go through harrowing and totally unacceptable abuse — mutilation, sexual violence, the disappearance of their husbands and sons. The level of protection and assist-ance they receive is all too often inadequate. Many are also forced into new roles by the absence or disappearance of men. They become heads of households, breadwinners and leaders of associations.

Many women have demonstrated enormous strength and courage during armed conflicts. Their efforts also helps the ICRC in very concrete ways, since women playThe sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, have cast uncertainty over global efforts to prevent Europe’s debt crisis from spinning out of control and raise questions about the future of one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions.

At the Washington-based IMF, which makes emergency loans to struggling economies, Strauss-Kahn has been a muscular advocate for aiding Greece, Ireland and Portugal as they have fought to avoid insolvency. A default by a developed European economy would shock the global financial markets and endanger the nascent economic recovery in the United States.

The IMF on Sunday named Strauss-Kahn’s second-in-command, former banker John Lipsky, as his replacement. But Lipsky was planning to step down at the end of the summer, and while a European has