United Nations officials negotiated on Thursday with Syrian rebels who had seized a group of United Nations peacekeepers in the disputed Golan Heights region between Syria and Israel, as the rebels offered assurances of the peacekeepers’ well-being and appeared to back away from threats to hold them as hostages. Multimedia Video Feature Watching Syria's War Rebels Interview Captured Governor Related The Lede: Video of Syrians With Seized U.N. Vehicles in Golan Heights (March 6, 2013) Number of Syrian Refugees Hits 1 Million, U.N. Says (March 7, 2013) Kerry Says U.S. Backs Mideast Efforts to Arm Syrian Rebels (March 6, 2013) World Twitter Logo. Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors Enlarge This Image Reuters A video posted online Wednesday showed a member of the Martyrs of Yarmouk claiming responsibility for the abduction of a group of U.N. peacekeepers. Enlarge This Image The New York Times Enlarge This Image Israel, which has watched anxiously for spillover as the Syrian civil war has intensified, signaled Thursday that it had no intention of becoming embroiled in the situation. Amos Gilad, a senior official in the Defense Ministry, told Israel Radio that “we can rely on the U.N. to persuade” the insurgent fighters to release the peacekeepers, who are from the Philippines, and that “neither the rebels nor anyone else has an interest in clashing with the international community, which it needs for support.” The authorities in Manila said the troops had not been harmed, and President Benigno S. Aquino III said he believed the peacekeepers would be viewed by both sides in the Syrian conflict as a “benign presence, so we don’t expect any further untoward incident to happen.” The 21 peacekeepers seized Wednesday are part of a United Nations force that was set up to patrol the demilitarized zone along Syria’s Golan frontier after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and their detention was the first time any United Nations forces had been drawn into the Syrian war. A group calling itself Martyrs of Yarmouk claimed responsibility for capturing the unit and, in a video posted on the Internet, threatened that if Syrian forces did not withdraw from the surrounding area within 24 hours, the peacekeepers would be dealt with “like war prisoners.” But on Thursday, a statement on what appeared to be the group’s Facebook page asserted that the rebels had acted to protect the Filipino unit from a Syrian government assault. “With God’s help, we were able to keep a group of U.N. members, who work in the border village of Al Jamlah, safe from the barbaric shelling of Assad’s criminal gang,” it said, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The peacekeepers were “under our protection until we can get them to safe areas,” the post continued. “We dissociate ourselves from all statements issued prior to this one regarding the detention of U.N. personnel,” it said. “They are now safe and honored and hosted as guests by the brigade’s leadership until we can deliver them safely to their headquarters.” A series of videos was also posted on the Internet showing different groups of the peacekeepers offering remarkably similar accounts. In each, an officer identifies himself and his unit, explains that they came under fire from government forces and were aided by civilians, who were giving them food and water and keeping them safe. A spokesman for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in Britain, said Thursday that the rebels were seeking the withdrawal of Syrian forces from the area, a halt to their shelling and a secure road to use to hand the Filipino soldiers over to international forces in the Quneitra border region. The observatory, which has a network of opposition contacts in Syria, said the soldiers were still in Al Jamlah and reported “clashes” between government troops and rebels on Thursday on the village’s northern outskirts. There was no immediate independent confirmation. The group said that Arab League representatives had joined United Nations officials in negotiating with the rebels. Violence continued elsewhere, with activists reporting that warplanes struck the north-central city of Raqqa, where rebels have made gains in recent days, and that the neighborhood of Khalidiya, in Homs, was being shelled. There were also reports of a warplane crashing in a southern suburb of the northern city of Idlib. An activist working with the Syrian Observatory said it was hit by antiaircraft fire and poured out black smoke. Other witnesses said they saw two parachutes. The scale of the destruction wrought by the almost two-year-old conflict emerged starkly on Thursday when Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian aid organization, said in a report that Syria’s once-efficient health care network had broken down, with patients treated in caves and basements as large numbers of hospitals closed and medical facilities became tools “in the military strategies of the parties to the conflict.” “Medical aid is being targeted, hospitals destroyed and medical personnel captured,” said Marie-Pierre Allié, the president of Doctors without Borders. The report, issued in New York, added to a catalog of woes this week as the number of refugees fleeing Syria exceeded a million and the school system was reported to have collapsed. Alan Cowell reported from London, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

When 14-year-old Pakistani girl Malala Yousafzai was attacked by a Taliban gunman on her way home from school last October, it was a shot heard around the world. The teen has since recovered her strength and is now heralded as a leader in the movement to bring education to every girl. Her message: We won't accept violence. Friday is the 102nd International Women's Day and women – and men – across the world will join their voices in unison to echo the same sentiment: We must all commit to end violence, rape and abuse.
From female journalists being sexually assaulted in Egypt to politicians in the US and UK stating that only some allegations of rape are "legitimate", 2012 sometimes seemed like a setback for women's rights. The gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in Delhi and a 17-year-old girl in South Africa have sparked a ripple of anger that has spread around the world. These are not exceptional cases; they are the tip of the iceberg. In the UK, one in three girls have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school. In South Africa, one in three men admit to having raped. Globally one in three women will be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in her lifetime. This isn't a marginal issue. We can't continue to ignore the fact that women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, war and malaria combined.
In the wake of such atrocity, men and women have united to stand for equality and change. We know the support of men and boys is also an important part of the solution, that we're more powerful together. Across the globe, bells have chimed, people have converged in peaceful protest, communities have congregated online and men and women have danced in the street in the name of change. In 2012 the power of the internet and social media gave us an opportunity to unite. This year could provide the moment to act.
We stand collectively and say "we won't accept violence". We can say enough is enough to violence against women and girls. We can provide better support for the survivors of abuse. We can ensure young people are educated about healthy relationships and we can challenge sexism when we encounter it. Let's make our voices heard.
Annie Lennox activist and founder of the Equals coalition
Elton John founder, Elton John Aids Foundation
Anouskha Shankar musician and composer
Joe Wright director
Barbara Broccoli producer
Beverley Knight musician
Dion Dublin former England footballer
Caroline Lucas MP Green party
Charlie Webster presenter
Iwan Thomas Olympian
Emeli Sandé musician
Eve Ensler activist and author
Fay Ripley actor
Frisky and Mannish comedians
Gemma Cairney radio presenter
Ghostpoet musician
Guy Paul actor
Harriet Walter actor
Helena Kennedy barrister and broadcaster
Hollie McNish writer
Inja musician
Jo Brand comedian
Eddie Izzard comedian
Joan Bakewell author and broadcaster
Juliet Stevenson actor
Katy Piper activist
Jahmene Douglas musician
Katy B musician
Genneus music producer
Keira Knightley actor
Dominic Cooper actor
Maryam d'Abo actor
Hugh Hudson film director
Laura Bates campaigner
Josh Shahryar human hights reporter
Naomie Harris actor
David Oyelowo actor
Natasha Walter writer and campaigner
Phillippe Sands professor of international law
Ruth Negga actor
Sabrina Mahfouz poet and playwright
Dean Atta writer
Sam Taylor-Johnson director and artist
Aaron Taylor-Johnson actor
Mohsen Makhmalbaf director
Sarah Brown writer and campaigner
Stella Creasy MP Labour
Tessa Munt MP Liberal Democrats
VV Brown musician
Yvette Cooper MP Labour
Zainab Salbi writer and activist

• As we celebrate this year's International Women's Day, the UK is also preparing to appear before the UN committee tasked with monitoring the government's progress on the promises we have made under the international law on women's human rights – Cedaw.
The government's engagement with Cedaw is welcome. As a state which prides itself on international human rights leadership it is important that we too step into the global spotlight and are accountable for action to guarantee basic rights here at home as well as abroad. Less heartening is what this spotlight reveals. The government's interim response to the UN committee ahead of July's full examination reveals a worrying picture which, in some instances, risks regression rather than progress for women's rights in the UK. For example, the fact that women are more likely to qualify for legal aid because they are among the poorest in our society is not a sign of progress.
As Eleanor Roosevelt stated shortly after drafting the universal declaration of human rights in 1948, human rights begin in small places close to home. We applaud the government's commitment to engaging with international human rights mechanisms, but we urge them to remember that the point of human rights, including women's human rights, is that they must be made real here at home.
Sanchita Hosali Deputy director, British Institute of Human Rights
Annie Campbell Director, Women's Aid Federation Northern Ireland
Lynda Dearlove Chief executive, Women at the Well
Ceri Goddard Chief executive, Fawcett Society
Rebecca Gill Director of policy, Campaigns & Communications, Platform 51
Carolina Gottardo Director, Latin American Women's Rights Service
Lily Greenan Manager, Scottish Women's Aid
Andy Gregg Chief executive, Race on the Agenda
Rachel Halford Director, Women in Prison
Paula Hardy Chief executive, Welsh Women's Aid
Vivienne Hayes Chief executive, Women's Resource Centre
Davina James-Hanman Director, AVA Project
Robina Iqbal Board member, Muslim Women's Network UK
Annette Lawson Chair, National Alliance of Women's Organisations
Marcia Lewinson Women Acting in Today's Society
Polly Neate Chief executive, Women's Aid
Sumanta Roy Policy and research manager, Imkaan
Emma Scott Director, Rights of Women
Deborah Singer Policy manager, Asylum Aid
• Food banks, soup kitchens, homeless night shelters, debt counselling… nationwide the church is engaged with those at the receiving end of the government's austerity measures. Last week the Methodist church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Church of Scotland published a report, The lies we tell ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty. It says statistics have been manipulated and misused by politicians and media to support a comfortable but dangerous story: that the poor somehow deserve their poverty, and therefore deserve the cuts which they increasingly face. This report from the churches focusing on UK poverty follows on from the launch of the Enough Food for Everyone If campaign, launched by over 100 charities and faith groups in January. If there was tax justice in the world; If international companies were transparent in their business dealing; If there wasn't a massive land grab… there would be enough food in the world for everyone.
In these reports and campaigns the church is asking the right question: "Why are they poor?" Like the Faith in the city report in the 80s, the church is actively challenging government attacks on the poor. It is not, as Seumas Milne asserts (Women are now to the left of men. It's a historic shift, 6 March), that women have swung to the left because of the decline of the church. Today the voice of women of the left is to be heard loud and clear in the church, united with all those who long for a more just and equitable society.
Rev Barbara Calvert
Chislehurst, Kent
• So women are to the left of men, and there are more of us of voting age than men. Perhaps this is the time for a shift from politics based on conflict and aggression to politics based on compassion and collaboration. If we're to keep Earth fit for humans to live on, women and men who value co-operation over fighting need to work together to radically change the political agenda, before it is too late.