In June of 1992, a Serbian woman from the Bosnia-Herzegovina town of Novi Grad is abducted with three others and repeatedly gang raped by seven different men.

Almost two years later, in Algeria, a 16-year-old girl named Katia Bengana is gunned down on her way home from school for refusing to wear a hidjab , the veil that all women are required to wear under strict Islamic tradition.

Less than two months after Miss Bengana is shot, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the first female prime minister of Rwanda and a woman who is committed to a power-sharing agreement between the two main tribes in that country, is slaughtered with her husband during the bloody civil unrest that follows the assassination of the Rwandan president.

"There is shooting,'' Mrs. Uwilingiyimana, a mother of five, had managed to broadcast over Radio France International before her death. "People are being terrorised; people are lying on the floor in their homes.'' As individually horrifying as these three cases may seem, they are, sadly, hardly uncommon in a world in which it appears to be increasingly dangerous for the female sex as a whole. On almost every continent, women of every class, race, culture, religion, nationality and ethnic origin are being suppressed, imprisoned or killed for their individual beliefs, for their contrary views on traditional social attitudes or often for just being a woman in a corrupt, violent society.

"Governments,'' says Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organisation which has this year expanded its annual worldwide women's campaign to coincide with the United Nations conference on women that is to be held in Beijing in September, "have done little to ensure that women enjoy the full range of human rights to which they are entitled. Every year, millions of women suffer every abuse and violation known to the modern world.

Amnesty's campaign aims to highlight the situation of women in some 75 countries and show how much work has to be done if we are to reach the United Nations' objective of equality by the year 2000.'' Indeed, the idea of female empowerment as a means of solving a great many of the world's problems, including the very pressing issue of global population control, has been expressed to some degree or another by everyone from Hillary Clinton to Pope John Paul II, yet the abuses -- and governmental inaction over them -- still continue.

According to Amnesty, for example, most of the casualties of war in the world are the planet's women and children, as are most of the world's refugees, displaced and poor.

Among those women who do stand up against injustices, moreover, a high percentage of them are often imprisoned, tortured, taken from their children or "disappeared'' as a result of their activist efforts.

In many instances, even those who have little direct involvement in a cause will still feel the sting of a corrupt or dictatorial regime.

In March, for example, Guatemalan activist Ms Eva Morales, who was brought to Bermuda by Amnesty International's local chapter to deliver the Colin Horsfield Human Rights Memorial Lecture, told of how her entire family was devastated and a number of members killed because some college-aged cousins of hers had participated in a student demonstration at the capital's main university.

The activist, who now lives in exile in the United States, was just 12 years old when she was thrown into prison.

"Often,'' said Mrs. Lena Ostroff, an official with AI Bermuda, "these people suffer the things that they do simply because they are women. In addition to children, they (women) really are among the most vulnerable members of a society.'' Bermudians, whose own awareness of women's issues has been heightened of late by the recent increase in the number of cases of domestic abuse here, can lend their support to the AI women's campaign and to the fight against female human rights violations in general by stopping by the organisation's Friday afternoon campaign table near Pink's Deli in Hamilton, Mrs. Ostroff added.

"Since the campaign was launched on International Women's Day in March, we have been inviting the public to sign letters and petitions on behalf of particular women whose human rights have been violated.

"The response,'' Mrs. Ostroff told Community, "has so far been very good.'' On Thursday evening, moreover, AI Bermuda will be sponsoring a women's rights forum at the Cathedral Hall in Hamilton in conjunction with the Island's Human Rights Commission.

At the forum, which is scheduled to take place at 7.30 p.m., four guest speakers will give talks on various aspects of the global situation for women.

They will include an address by Ms Leyoni Junos on sexism in language and institutions, one by Ms Maria Thacker on cultural perspectives, another by Ms Clare Hatcher on women and human rights and one by Ms Kim Wilson on female genital mutilation.

Mrs. Ostroff, who said that the larger Amnesty organisation will be sending a delegation to the parallel non-governmental conference that was recently and controversially moved to a venue outside of Beijing and therefore away from the government officials who will be meeting in the Chinese capital in September, revealed to Community last week that Ms Hatcher, a lawyer with a strong interest in human rights, was also hoping to meet with the official Bermuda delegation in an effort to express some grassroots concerns.

In the past few weeks, the delegation, which is being led by Human Affairs Minister the Hon. Jerome Dill, has been variously criticised, among other things, for having both a man at its head as well as one whose record on women's issues is relatively slim. Whether or not the criticisms have merit, the official Bermuda delegation will not be altered, a defiant Mr. Dill told The Royal Gazette recently. In the meantime, AI Bermuda will be winding up its five-month women's campaign this month, hoping against some overwhelming odds that it has had some sort of positive effect.

"Whether or not we can actually change the situations of the women that we spotlight is often up in the air,'' Mrs. Ostroff said. "At the very least, we can spotlight the injustices that they suffer and focus more people's attention on them.'' ONE OF MANY -- Algerian teenager Katia Bengana, spotlighted by Amnesty International, was gunned down on her way home from school for refusing to wear a veil.