From the private to the public sphere: new research on women's participation in peace-building

Despite the United Nation's landmark Security Council Resolution on women, peace and security in 2000 which highlighted the importance of women's participation in peace-building, only one in 40 peace treaty signatories over the last 25 years has been a woman. Yet evidence from non-government organisations and women's rights organisations shows that women are active agents of peace, resolving conflicts at all levels of society with little or no recognition. This article discusses new research which tracks women's roles in building peace at local levels in five conflict-affected contexts: Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone. The article highlights the significance of violence against women as a barrier to peace-building, and explores how and why women's exclusion and marginalisation from peace processes tends to increase the more formal the processes become. The article uses two case studies of women's rights organisations in Afghanistan and Nepal to illustrate the research findings and demonstrate how communities can mobilise to promote gender equality and fulfil women's rights.     

Asymptotic properties of the kernel mode estimator under twice censorship model

In this article, we study the asymptotic properties of the kernel estimator of the mode and density function when the data are twice censored. More specifically, we first establish a strong uniform consistency over a compact set with a rate of the kernel density estimator and then we give the consistency with rate and asymptotic normality for the kernel mode estimator. An application to confidence bands is given.     

Deathbed visions from India: a study of family observations in northern Kerala

This is an interview-based study of 104 families and their observations of the last weeks and days of a dying family member. Forty families reported "unusual experiences and behaviors" from the dying person in their last period of life. Thirty of these dying persons displayed behavior consistent with deathbed visions-interacting or speaking with deceased relatives, mostly their dead parents. There were six cases of reported premonitions of death and five possible confusional states with one patient reported to have had both a deathbed vision and confusional experiences. Socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, occupation, or cause and place of death were not found to be significant. Hindu patients appeared to be more likely than Muslim patients to report these experiences. Use of opiates (or not) did not appear to influence reports. The findings are discussed with reference to past studies of deathbed visions as well as their implications for the future pastoral care of dying people and their families.