This International Women’s Day, I took a moment to consider the many varied points of view that I heard from and about women during our recent Sudan mission. Their stories are applicable to the situation of many women living in crisis situations around the world.

Women’s groups in Khartoum are working together to push for reform of north Sudan’s criminal laws on rape and adultery. Despite all of the difficulties that they face, they are taking positive steps forward and using the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence to launch their campaign.

Over the past year the U.S. has taken a leading role at the United Nations on violence against women. Yet the U.S. has still not adopted the legislation that adopts a comprehensive approach to violence against women  around the world.

“Nothing has ever been achieved for displaced women in Colombia without us fighting for our own rights, so we decided to take our cases to court. We knew we were taking a risk as so many of our leaders have been threatened and physically attacked, but we decided to go ahead anyway.”

A Colombian displaced woman told me this while we sat in the women’s community center that had recently been re-built after it was burned down by an illegal armed group.

U.S. major league baseball teams recently started requiring potential players and their parents to undergo DNA testing to prove who recruits are – an attempt to try to ensure that they aren't understating their age in order to win more lucrative contracts. Fortunately there is a better, cheaper and more reliable way to confirm age and identity. It’s called birth registration.

Shadi Sadr, a remarkable Iranian women’s rights activist, was beaten and arrested on Friday July 17 and is being held in detention. I met Shadi at a conference last year and was struck by her courage and quiet determination that over time her work as a human rights lawyer and peaceful campaigner would bring more respect for women’s rights in Iran.

On Tuesday the Obama administration convened an international conference to seek renewed commitment to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between north and south Sudan. The next day I attended a meeting where representatives of northern and southern Sudan gave their perspectives on the outcomes of the conference. It was supposed to be a time for showing the world how much agreement there was between the parties. Yet, in this short meeting, the parties were unable to conceal their disagreements and significant distrust of each other.

I watched President Obama’s Cairo speech about US relations with the Muslim world while in the “no man’s land” between the Syrian and Iraqi border-posts. Seven hundred and eighty Iraqi Palestinian refugees are currently forced to stay in this inhospitable stretch of desert known as Al-Tanf camp. They are confined to this small area – in effect living in a prison camp.

When we met with a group of 300 Ethiopian Anyuak refugees in February in Sudan, we had no idea that a week later they would be calling us because they were caught up in heavy fighting between northern and southern Sudanese forces. The Government of Southern Sudan and the United Nations had failed to protect them.

The group had fled in 2003 after their community suffered targeted attacks in Ethiopia. Their experience since arriving in Sudan had not been a good one. They had been forced to move twice after harassment and attacks. Their last move was in December 2008, to the town of Malakal, where they were taken in by a church. All 300 people slept there for weeks, living in dangerously overcrowded conditions. Then the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) found them a temporary place to stay at their way station – a facility which is set up for Sudanese returnees to stay in for a night or two while they await transport back to their home villages.

The decision to issue an arrest warrant for President Al-Bashir of Sudan by the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been the source of many intense discussions here in Sudan at the moment. This will be the first ICC arrest warrant ever issued for a sitting president. Since I arrived in Sudan a couple of weeks ago I have talked with many Sudanese people who are members of civil society and human rights organizations, most of whom are no fans of their president, but who have varying views on the  indictment.