The theme of this year’s International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia[1], ‘Leave No One Behind: Equality, Freedom and Justice for All’, underscores the urgent need to address the persistent discrimination, violence, and marginalization faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual...
After the Taliban takeover, former magazine-owner Siamoy* redirected her work towards women’s empowerment and capacity-building. Focusing on the most vulnerable women, including illiterate women and women with disabilities, her NGO now provides training and start-up funding for women-led...
Amani Al Derbi, 35, was a hardworking mother and a psychotherapist in the Gaza Ministry of Health. Her mission: to provide comfort to those traumatized by years of conflict.
After the eruption of war in Gaza, UN Women shared Amani’s story of survival in Rafah. At the time—November 2023—Rafah...
[Also available in Arabic]
New UN Women survey data from Rafah highlights the depth of physical and mental despair, with 93% of women interviewed feeling unsafe and over half reporting medical conditions requiring urgent attention. With any Israeli ground invasion, these numbers will soar...
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New York/Geneva/Rome/Washington — Escalating conflict is driving record levels of gender-based violence, displacement and hunger in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), threatening to push the country to the brink of catastrophe without urgent...
The climate crisis is the most pressing issue of our times, impacting our lives and entire ecosystems. It threatens progress on gender equality, human rights, and sustainable development. By 2050, climate change will push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty.
Exposing the climate...
UN Women Executive Board to convene annual session 2024
The President of the Executive Board, H.E. Ms. Markova Concepción Jaramillo, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Panama to the United Nations, will open the session on 18 June at 10am EDT, together with UN Women Executive Director...
“I know how difficult it is to be a Roma woman, because we face discrimination outside the community, but also inside the community,” said Anzhelika Bielova, who spoke at the Youth Interactive Dialogue during the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68) at the UN...
When Natacha Sangwa wanted to learn computer coding, people in her life asked, ‘do you really think you’ll be able to handle it?’ Coding needs time and focus that they believed girls lacked. After all, men hold most of the tech jobs.
“I was motivated to prove them wrong by learning how to code...
UN Women joins young women and girls globally who are putting a spotlight on leadership in the digital world. Girls’ leadership in Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is now more crucial than ever.
To achieve full, equal...
My first exposure to this dire issue came when I, as a playwright, started to seek to create a narrative that would amplify the voices of women and girls caught in the crosshairs of war. It was the Liberian civil war. I was seeking their unheard voices. It would become my Broadway play...
Climate change and its deluge of devastation, in the form of epic floods, droughts, wildfires, and temperature changes, is no longer a tale of some hypothetical apocalyptic future. Between 2000 and 2019, according to UN Women’s gendered analysis of the impact of climate change on poverty...
It is seven a.m. in Tumaco, a coastal municipality in Nariño, Colombia. Anabel Magallanes walks through the mudflats of the mangrove forest in low tide, looking for piangua or concha – a nutrient-rich mollusk that is native to this area and used in the traditional cuisine of southwestern...
[Arabic version]
New York/Cairo — Today, UN Women launches its latest Gender Alert on Gaza. Six months into the war, 10,000 Palestinian women in Gaza have been killed, among them an estimated 6,000 mothers, leaving 19,000 children orphaned. Women who have survived Israeli bombardment and ground...
Many of those attacks were committed in homes and on the streets, that report said, adding that only four victims of sexual violence were willing and able to report to the authorities, owing to stigma, distrust of the justice system, the collapse of the institutions of justice, and fear of...
[Also available in Arabic]
Sudan’s current conflict, which marks its one-year point this week, is having a devastating impact on the people of Sudan, particularly women and girls. The conflict has reversed the gains made towards democracy and stability, leaving the country in suffering and...
A woman is seen at a poultry farm in Sudan that now hosts hundreds of people displaced by the country’s civil war. Photo: OCHA/Ala Kheir
Since 15 April 2023, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has resulted in the deaths of at least 14,600 people. More than...
During negotiations in late 2023, Elmahdi noted, even an attempt to add a quota to women’s representation at the table fell short, with a mandate that women make up just 30 per cent of negotiators.
“We’ve seen researchers saying that, if you have women at the negotiating table, then you have a...
On 15 April 2023, war broke out in Sudan in between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In the year that followed, some 8.2 million people have fled their homes, and an estimated 24.8 million are projected to need humanitarian assistance in 2024.
As the conflict...
Laws and treaties prohibiting gender discrimination have failed to alter the stark fact that, globally, women are still paid significantly less than men for the same work. Achieving gender equality in the workplace requires a transformation—of attitudes, economic structures, and opportunities—to...