Women, Children, Population – UN News Centre

Gender-based violence, hate speech and disinformation are being used extensively online and offline, to chill or kill women’s freedom of expression, an independent UN human rights expert told the General Assembly on Monday.

When COVID-19 closed schools in Basra, southern Iraq, the academic prospects for many schoolgirls were put at risk. On International Day of The Girl Child, we look at a UN program which is helping girls in the region to keep learning.

Discussing gender equality in Jordan can lead to difficult conversations, as Balqees Shahin, a volunteer for the UN Women gender equality campaign HeforShe, has discovered. Marking International Day of The Girl Child on Monday, Ms. Shahin told UN News that online games can help young people to address gender issues.

Unresolved issues surrounding parliamentary quotas, and women’s participation in elections in Somalia were highlighted by UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed in the Security Council on Tuesday, with the aim of increasing their involvement in the political process.     

Sexual abuse and exploitation allegedly carried out by World Health Organization (WHO) staff during the UN health agency’s response to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is “a sickening betrayal of the people we serve,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said on Tuesday. 

Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in mid-August, the world has continued to watch anxiously, as the fate of women and girls throughout the country hangs in the balance.

Top UN officials met in the margins of the 76th General Assembly on Thursday,  with a strong call to action to stamp out gender-based violence (GBV), amid a rise in forced displacement and other humanitarian emergencies around the globe.

Afghanistan’s girls and women are showing “bravery” in the face of real “fears and pressures” following the formation of the new, de facto authorities in Afghanistan,  according to a UNICEF member of staff, one of the few westerners to remain in Kabul.

Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last month, they have made some commitments to uphold human rights. However, their subsequent actions have “sadly contradicted” those promises, the UN rights chief told a side event of the General Assembly on Tuesday.

The UN’s gender equality and empowerment organization on Thursday published a flagship feminist plan for economic recovery and transformation, which aims to learn the lessons of the past, and seize the opportunity to handle COVID-related crises better.

Secretary-General António Guterres described Sima Sami Bahous of Jordan, as “a champion for women and girls”, announcing on Monday her appointment to lead the UN’s gender equality and empowerment entity, UN Women. 

With Taliban fighters continuing to gain ground in Afghanistan, the UN Secretary-General is following events “with deep concern” said the UN Spokesperson on Thursday, including the battle for Herat and Kandahar, the country’s second and third largest cities.  

Entrepreneurship can mean more freedom for women according to the first Latin-American advocate of eTrade for All, an initiative developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to expand and promote the digital economy, especially in low and middle-income countries.

A weaving project is helping to close the decades-long divide between the two communities in Cyprus, with assistance from the UN mission in the country, UNFICYP. 

A teenage girl who was sold for sex for the price of a few beers as a twelve-year-old, has told the United Nations how she was trafficked between Burundi and Tanzania in East Africa.

Farmers, especially women and indigenous people, work tirelessly to put food on our tables. UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed met on Saturday women producers at a farmers’ market in Circo Massimo, Rome, ahead of the Food Systems Pre-Summit taking place next week.

Deteriorating economic conditions since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic have fuelled an increase in domestic violence and forced marriage in Sudan, a UN-backed study has revealed. 

Fewer women will regain jobs lost to the COVID-19 pandemic during the recovery period, than men, according to a new study released on Monday by the UN’s labour agency.  

In South Africa, a sexual offence is committed every ten minutes, and the number is rising, according to official police statistics. The UN is working closely with the Government to ensure that care centres have the resources to help survivors of sexual violence across the country, including the most deprived regions.   

With the chief of the UN’s gender empowerment agency declaring that women are still “sitting in the corridors when men are inside at the table negotiating peace”, the historic Generation Equality Forum in Paris concluded on Friday with new commitments designed to address that, and other injustices.

In a bid to put gender equality at the heart of COVID recovery, UN Women kicked off a three-day “landmark effort” in Paris on Wednesday, aiming to lay out ambitious investments and policies to bridge the chasm between where women stand in the world today, and where they should be, by 2030.  

As the world grapples unevenly with the effects of COVID-19, “a parallel and equally horrific pandemic” has threatened half the world’s population, the UN chief said on Tuesday, in the lead up to the Generation Equality Forum in France.

With all the major indicators for Afghanistan’s security and development looking “negative or stagnant” as international troops withdraw, the threats that lie ahead cannot be overstated, the top UN official in the country told the Security Council on Tuesday. 

A Ugandan woman entrepreneur who was left with just a wheelbarrow and a red dress, when a business partner ran off with all her money has been recognized with an award by the UN trade agency (UNCTAD) after she grew her company into a nationwide enterprise with five million customers.

When Nigerian Blessing Ojukwu became pregnant after she was raped, her family disowned her. She was forced to live with her abuser, who continued to attack her. Now, a UN-backed initiative is giving her, and others in similar situations, a chance to become financially independent, and start new lives. 

Drones are providing life-saving care to women in remote parts of the southern African country, Botswana, who otherwise may die in childbirth, thanks to support from the United Nations.   

Panel discussions exclusively made up of men, or ‘manels’ need to stop, says Valerie Julliand, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Indonesia. Ms. Julliand has taken steps to promote gender parity by pledging that the UN will only participate in panels which include women’s voices.

The UN chief on Monday, commended an award-winning Kenyan peacekeeper for her gender-mainstreaming work while serving in the restive Darfur region of Sudan. 

Manizha Sangin arrived in Russia as young refugee, when her family fled the violence of the civil war in Tajikistan. Today, she is a high-profile singer, representing Russia in the final of the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, with the song “Russian Woman”. Ms. Sangin is also a UN Goodwill Ambassador for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), and a domestic abuse activist.

Moving from Sudan’s current fragile transition period towards stable civilian rule, requires a continued “spirt of unity, partnership and collaboration”, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Thursday.