Landlords at the training program in Kibera, Nairobi. Credit: Steven Ashuma
 
When landlords are empowered, they can become a grassroots answer to the intractable problem of sexual violence in slums.

By Meg Warren
BELLINGHAM, Washington USA, Apr 10 2026 (IPS)

Trigger warning: This article discusses child rape.

Their quiet latent power comes from being ever-present eyes and ears on the ground. As they move around their compounds, collecting rent and checking on anywhere from 10 to 20 houses occupied by as many as 200 people, they see and hear things.

They say not everyone knows their neighbours these days. But landlords play a unique role in Kibera, one of the world’s largest informal slums, situated on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. Here, rape and gender-based violence are widespread, and a 2022 study found that Kenya is third in the world for teen pregnancies. In 2024, thousands marched across the country against femicide, after a rise in murders. Last month, Kenya announced it was rolling out new protections for female athletes after they were targeted.

A harmful mix of cultural norms, limited government services, and persistent economic struggles has made gender-based violence rampant in slums like Kibera. One might assume the people who can address such a systemic problem are those who hold power, authority, and indeed, the responsibility to deal with it, such as legal authorities, government officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

But landlords know when violence breaks out behind closed doors; they have a sense when things are turning ugly. Though typically, they don’t want to interfere in what residents have long considered “private domestic matters.”

Siama Yusuf, senior program officer at CFK Africa, addressing the community at Kiandutu informal settlement, Nairobi. Credit: Meg Warren

When parents learn of their young girls’ pregnancy, they throw them out of the house. Not only because of the cultural norms that shame the victims, but also because, given their conditions of extreme poverty, they don’t want to have one more mouth to feed.

Ultimately, rape and the consequent teen pregnancies become an economic problem, burdening landlords with unpaid tenants – a clear draw for property owners to become engaged in preventing this kind of violence.

When CFK Africa, an NGO focused on empowering youth in Kibera, launched a program to train landlords on how to spot and respond to domestic violence and sexual assault, the participating property owners learned that they could be valuable allies at very little cost to themselves and teach others to do the same. They could earn respect as community leaders and help keep tenants at their properties—a win-win.

In one incident, a landlord was at home in his compound in the afternoon when he heard cries emerging from a house. In the past, he would have put it out of his mind, deciding that he shouldn’t get involved in a “private domestic matter.”

Instead, he went to the house, where he found a father brutally raping his four-year-old daughter. He immediately intervened to stop it and called the program’s special number for an emergency ambulance service, which he had learned about during the training the previous day. It directs callers to a private ambulance or other services, including a recently installed “gender desk.”

Typically, the police were reluctant to enter the slums. This meant that people could perpetrate violence without facing consequences. The landlord knew how to get help, so he did.

He found the girl’s mother, who had been at work, and reassured her that he would support her if she wanted to file a police report against her husband. He told her that there’s no fee to file the report — a community myth perpetuated to deter people from reporting violence.

In 2025, landlords made 92 referrals to the authorities, helping survivors of violence with life-saving support services. The program has since expanded to other slums in Kenya, like Mathare and Mukuru kwa Ruben, and in Kajiado County.

CFK’s model has potential for global scale. My team’s 2024 study conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suggested that the most powerful allies aren’t outsiders, but respected local leaders such as the church pastors and the wives of the imams, using their community’s own values and traditions to stand up for others.

When they decided to turn their knowledge and power into a strength, they used their influence to teach an estimated 30,000 congregants about healthy relationships characterized by respect, gender equity, nonviolence, and empowerment. Four years later, gender-based violence had dropped dramatically by 50 to 85%.

It’s time for governments and aid agencies to recognize and empower non-traditional allies as an invaluable resource in the fight against gender-based violence. Target 5.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls to eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking, sexual exploitation, and other types of exploitation.

The day after the landlord in Kibera contacted the emergency line, he called back to deliver hopeful news. The little girl had suffered serious injuries from the attack and was taken to the hospital, but doctors said she would survive because of the timely intervention. Her life was saved thanks to an unexpected ally: the landlord.

Meg Warren, Ph.D. is Professor of Management, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington.

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Credit: Ryan Brown/UN Women

By Inés M. Pousadela and Samuel King
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay / BRUSSELS, Belgium, Mar 30 2026 (IPS)

On 19 March, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) did something unprecedented in its eight-decade history: it held a vote. The Trump administration, having spent two weeks attempting to defer, amend and ultimately block the session’s main outcome document, known as the agreed conclusions, cast the only vote against its adoption. That dissenting vote said a lot, as it came from the world’s most powerful government, backed by financial leverage, bilateral reach and a network of anti-rights states and organisations that are making inroads at many levels.

Established in 1946, the CSW brings together 45 states each year to negotiate commitments that, while not legally binding, shape domestic legislation, set international norms and signal the direction of political will. Civil society plays an important role in it: the NGO Committee on the Status of Women coordinates thousands of organisations, from large international bodies to grassroots groups, with the aim of ensuring those most affected by policy have a seat at the table. For several decades, this has been the closest thing the world has to a dedicated annual intergovernmental negotiation on women’s rights.

The assault on gender equality

The Trump administration arrived at CSW70 having withdrawn from UN Women in January and from its Executive Board in February, citing opposition to what it calls ‘gender ideology’. It submitted eight amendments targeting language on reproductive health. When these didn’t succeed, it attempted to defer or withdraw the conclusions entirely. When that too failed, it voted against adoption and tabled a separate resolution seeking to impose a restrictive definition of gender, effectively attempting to rewrite 30 years of carefully negotiated commitments. Its resolution was blocked.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defined western civilisation as bound together by Christian faith, shared ancestry and cultural heritage, an ideological approach that treats women’s equality, reproductive rights and LGBTQI+ rights not as human rights but ideological impositions to be rejected. The Trump administration’s financial muscle is now the delivery mechanism for this worldview.

Defunding as a weapon

The immediate material crisis at CSW70 was the collapse of funding. The elimination of 90 per cent of USAID contracts wiped out US$60 billion in foreign aid. The USA is instead negotiating bilateral deals with 71 countries under its ‘America First’ global health strategy, extending its global gag rule not just to civil society organisations but to recipient governments. This means any institution that receives US health funding must certify that neither it nor any organisation it works with promotes or provides abortion.

Funding will now flow through faith-based groups, with ultra-conservative Christian organisations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Watch International set to benefit, having spent years building networks across Africa, Asia and Latin America. They use the language of family values, parental rights and national sovereignty to consolidate conservative influence over laws affecting women, LGBTQI+ people and young people. In many countries, they already have direct access to governments while progressive organisations are routinely excluded.

With threats intensifying, the UN is signalling retreat. A proposal under the UN80 cost-cutting initiative to merge UN Women with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has alarmed civil society worldwide. The stated rationale is efficiency, but there’s little overlap between the two agencies and their combined budgets make up a small part of the UN’s overall spending, suggesting savings would be modest. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the targeting of these organisations reflects the increasing contestation of their rights-based mandates rather than any logic of organisational efficiency.

Over 500 civil society organisations signed an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning that, when sexual and reproductive health rights are absorbed into broader mandates, they risk ‘being deprioritised, underfunded, or rendered politically invisible’. Some states have urged caution but so far none has committed to blocking the merger.

Civil society holds the line

In difficult times, over 4,600 civil society delegates attended CSW70 and made their presence count. They took the floor to name structural barriers and demand accountability: youth representatives challenged the normalisation of online violence, Pacific Island delegates described how geography compounds the denial of justice for survivors, and activists from Haiti documented the labour exploitation of migrant domestic workers. They all emphasised that when women’s rights organisations are restricted or defunded, survivors lose their primary pathway to justice.

The NGO CSW Forum hosted over 750 events alongside the official session. But not everyone could participate. US visa restrictions meant several women’s rights activists, particularly from the global south, couldn’t enter the country. This is a worsening problem that limits civil society’s ability to engage.

CIVICUS’s newly released 2026 State of Civil Society Report documents exactly what civil society has been up against: institutions built to protect women’s rights under sustained, coordinated attack, their funding cut, their mandates targeted and the human rights values they are built on reopened for revision. CSW70’s agreed conclusions offer hope, committing states to action on AI governance, discriminatory laws, digital justice, labour rights, legal aid and the formal recognition of care workers. But as the contest over them made plain, political will is running low and the anti-rights community is emboldened. Civil society left CSW70 without losing ground – and this seems to be the measure of success in the regressive times we live in.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

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Opening of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70)
 
Shaped by ongoing dialogue, the CSW70 highlighted progress and diverse perspectives on gender and justice.

By Fernanda Lagoeiro
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Mar 23 2026 (IPS)

The 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) (March 9-19), held at the United Nations headquarters, brought together governments, decision makers, civil society, and international organizations to address a central issue: access to justice for women and girls.

Taking place in a complex global context, the session reflected both the continued relevance of multilateral cooperation and the evolving nature of discussions on gender equality. As noted in UN remarks during the session, “this year’s theme cuts to the heart of the struggle for equality: access to justice,” giving emphasis on the importance of strengthening legal systems and ensuring that rights are effectively realized.

Sustaining momentum on Gender Equality

One of the key outcomes of CSW70 was the adoption of the Agreed Conclusions, which reaffirm the international community’s commitment to advancing gender equality and improving access to justice worldwide.

While the conclusions were adopted through a recorded vote (an approach less common in CSW processes) the result demonstrated broad support among member states for maintaining and advancing existing frameworks.

Observers noted that the outcome reflects a continued global commitment to the principles first established at the Fourth World Conference on Women and articulated in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

Civil society organizations also welcomed the outcome, highlighting that the adoption of the conclusions signals that cooperation remains possible, even in a changing geopolitical landscape.

Focusing on access to justice

Discussions throughout the session emphasized that access to justice extends beyond legal frameworks. It includes the ability of women and girls to navigate institutions, obtain remedies, and be protected under the law.

Globally, women have achieved significant legal advancements over the past decades, yet disparities persist in many regions.

As emphasized by UN officials, “no country in the world has achieved full legal equality,” reinforcing the importance of continued efforts at national and international levels.

This shared recognition helped anchor discussions in practical solutions, including strengthening judicial systems, expanding legal aid, and addressing barriers faced by marginalized groups.

Evolving discussions and diverse perspectives

CSW70 also reflected the diversity of perspectives among Member States on how best to advance gender equality.

A number of proposals were introduced during negotiations addressing definitions, policy language, and implementation approaches. These included discussions on how to frame gender, how to address sexual and reproductive health and rights, and how to reflect different national contexts in global agreements.

While not all proposals were incorporated into the final text, the process itself illustrated the dynamic nature of multilateral dialogue. It also highlighted the importance of balancing shared global commitments with national priorities and legal frameworks.

Observers noted that such discussions, while sometimes complex, are part of the ongoing evolution of international cooperation.

The use of a recorded vote, rather than consensus, marked a notable procedural development at CSW70. The session also included discussions around procedural options, such as potential amendments or motions that could influence the negotiation process.

While these mechanisms are part of standard UN practice, their consideration reflects the range of tools available to Member States in shaping outcomes.

The role of civil society

Civil society organizations played an active and visible role throughout the session, while still with a limited space, but contributing expertise, advocacy, and on-the-ground perspectives.

While formal negotiations are led by Member States, civil society contributions helped inform discussions and maintain focus on implementation and accountability. Participants widely recognized that continued collaboration between governments and civil society will be essential for translating commitments into tangible outcomes.

Global South perspectives and contributions

Delegations from regions including Latin America, Africa, and Asia worked to ensure that the outcomes reflected diverse realities and development contexts. In particular, coordination among Latin American countries (including Brazil and Chile) supported regional dialogue and helped maintain constructive engagement throughout the session. Brazilian organizations brought new projects and perspectives around climate resilience to high-level representatives.

These contributions highlight the growing influence of Global South actors in multilateral spaces, not only as participants but as key contributors to consensus-building and policy development. At the same time, the diversity within the Global South itself underscores the importance of inclusive dialogue that reflects a wide range of experiences and priorities.

Areas for continued attention

Alongside its achievements, CSW70 also pointed to areas where further work may be needed.

Differences in perspectives on certain issues (such as specific policy language or implementation approaches) indicate that continued dialogue will be important in future sessions. These discussions reflect the complexity of advancing global agreements in a diverse international community.

Additionally, the evolving nature of negotiations suggests an opportunity to further strengthen mechanisms for collaboration and consensus-building.

Looking ahead

CSW70 reaffirmed the importance of sustained international cooperation in advancing gender equality and access to justice. While the session did not resolve all differences, it demonstrated that progress remains possible through dialogue, engagement, and shared commitment.

As the global community continues to build on the foundations established by the Beijing Platform for Action, the focus will remain on translating commitments into concrete improvements in the lives of women and girls.

In this context, CSW70 stands as a reminder that multilateral processes are not only about outcomes, but also about the continued willingness of countries to come together, exchange perspectives, and move forward collectively (for real).

Fernanda Lagoeiro is a Brazilian journalist specializing in gender, climate and health issues. She has been covering issues relating to social impact, nonprofit sector, and environmental agendas, with a focus on underreported perspectives and human-centered storytelling. She has also contributed to national and international media outlets (such as Der Tagesspiegel, Deutsche Welle etc) and to institutional projects, focusing on accessible and impactful narratives.

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Street scen of Herat province.

By External Source
HERAT, Afghanistan, Mar 18 2026 (IPS)

When Khadija Ahmadzada was arrested in Herat province of Afghanistan in January this year, it sparked widespread domestic and international protests. Women’s rights activists and social media users raised their voices with slogans such as “Sport is not a crime,” “Education is a right for women,” and “Don’t erase women,” often using the hashtag #BeHerVoice.

At the time of her arrest, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights, Richard Bennett, had called for the immediate release of taekwondo coach Khadija Ahmadzada, expressing deep concern over her detention by the Taliban.

She has since been released but the outcry underlined the need for supporting Afghan women athletes, which activists around the world pointed out is a collective responsibility and warned that remaining silent in the face of oppression carries dangerous consequences.

Khadija Ahmadzada, 22, was an award-winning taekwondo athlete and coach of Afghanistan’s national youth team during the republic era. When the Taliban came to power, she tried to keep the sport alive for women and girls, creating opportunities for them to train, learn, and move forward at a time when those opportunities were steadily disappearing.

Herat was once a city where women’s sports clubs thrived. The women were highly motivated and recorded many achievements. The centers were not merely places for physical training; they also served as educational, social, and empowerment spaces for women and girls. Following the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan, all women’s sports facilities were shut down, and female athletes were categorically barred from continuing their activities.

Sports clubs have been closed to women since 2021, shortly after the Taliban returned to power, adding to a raft of measures put in place based on the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law. At the time, it was claimed they would reopen when a “safe environment” had been established. But as of January 2026, no sports club has reopened, and women are still barred from competition.

Known not only as a skilled athlete but also a determined and committed coach, Khadija Ahmadzada continued her work quietly under the Taliban’s strict restrictions, ensuring that women who wanted to train could still find a way. But her efforts did not remain hidden. In January 2026, she was arrested.

Her arrest highlights the intense pressure on active women in Afghanistan and reflects how they are forced to take forbidden paths to protect their basic rights and stay part of society.

Khadija Ahmadzada was trained in taekwondo professionally at the Jumong Taekwondo Academy in Herat under the guidance of Korean experts. Within a short time, she became a member of Afghanistan’s national youth team and won medals in domestic and regional competitions. She began teaching and training girls in taekwondo after ending her professional athletic career.

One of Khadija Ahmadzada’s students, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons said, “she is a skilled and devoted coach, and I am proud of her courage and selflessness”. When the Taliban’s morality police came to arrest Khadija, she assisted her students leave the club quietly while she stayed behind in defiance of the Taliban’s rules and was detained.

In the early days after Herat fell to the Taliban in August 2021, they began a gradual process of shutting down women and girls’ sports centers in stages. First the regime’s morality police issued verbal orders to operators of sports centers. The screws were tightened further in subsequent actions by confiscating equipment, locking up the gates of sports clubs and arrests of the owners and coaches.

Khadija’s two weeks in prison put tremendous pressure on her family. They repeatedly appealed to local representatives, community elders, and officials to help secure her release. Khadija was finally released after 13 days of imprisonment with a written pledge to not repeat the offense. Yet her freedom was less an end to suffering than a reminder of a life endured under Afghanistan’s Taliban.

Khadija established an underground taekwondo training program in the Jebraeil neighborhood of Herat, which has become a symbol of women’s resistance against the Taliban’s strict restrictions. She noted that before the Taliban came, many women were active in this field and earned a living through it. When the Taliban took over, sports halls were closed by their orders, women’s teams were disbanded, and female athletes and coaches either stayed at home or left the country. Among those who remained, women were forced to choose between complete silence or quiet resistance. Khadija was one of those who chose the latter.

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Excerpt:

Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, addresses the opening of the Seventieth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2026 (IPS)

The 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) has brought together global leaders, gender equity advocates, and youth representatives at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters to advance efforts to strengthen mechanisms for justice, equality, and representation for women and girls worldwide. With challenges particularly pronounced in conflict zones, this year’s priority theme —“ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls — focuses on repealing discriminatory laws and addressing persistent structural barriers that prevent women and girls from being fully heard, represented, and treated equally.

At the opening of the session in March 9, the CSW adopted its Agreed Conclusions, which emphasized the need to improve access to justice for women and girls, following a week of spirited discussions among member states. During these discussions, several countries, including the United States, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, proposed objections in which they sought to modify language that strongly supported these reforms and to revisit provisions from previous agreements.

These efforts elicited significant pushback from other member states, who argued that such objections would undermine years of progress in gender equity reforms. The Chair of the CSW ultimately decided to preserve some core elements of previous agreements while incorporating progressive changes.

As the Commission convened to adopt the outcome, efforts to halt these changes were brought forward by the U.S., which argued that the provisions included “controversial” and “ideological” issues. These efforts ultimately failed, gaining votes from only the U.S. Other states, including Egypt and Nigeria, called for a delay in the voting process to allow time for continued negotiations.

“At a time of severe backlash on human rights and multilateralism, the adoption of Agreed Conclusions that safeguard long-standing gender equality standards is a powerful signal that global commitments still matter and that attempts to turn back the clock will not go unchallenged,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“While the loss of consensus is disappointing, a weakened text – or no outcome at all – would have sent an especially troubling signal to women and girls who continue to face barriers to access to justice, and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. In a climate marked by widespread impunity, Amnesty reiterates its calls on states to step up resistance to attacks on gender justice,” added Callamard.

Women currently hold only about 64 percent of the legal rights afforded to men, with “discriminatory laws and patriarchal norms” continuing to impede progress towards justice. These disparities are particularly pronounced in conflict settings, where women and girls face heightened risks of violence, displacement, and exclusion from justice, opportunities, and decision-making.

“We meet at a time of multiple global crises, peace eludes us, and the world is extremely and increasingly fragmented. And gender inequality is compounded by the evils of war and conflict, from Afghanistan to Haiti, to Iran, Myanmar, Palestine, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and beyond,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the opening of the 70th session of the CSW. “When women and girls are denied justice, the damage goes far beyond any single case: it impacts the very fabric of our societies and good governance. Public trust erodes, institutions lose legitimacy, and the rule of law itself is weakened. A justice system that fails half the population cannot claim to uphold justice at all.”

Legal protections from discrimination and exploitation, and access to essential services are rapidly eroding, while female human rights defenders are increasingly under attack. Sexual and reproductive health rights are also being rolled back, and the UN has recorded an 87 percent increase in cases of conflict-related sexual violence over the past two years. Women and children in conflict zones continue to bear the heaviest burdens of violence and displacement. Currently, the number of women and girls living within 50 kilometers of deadly conflict is at its highest level in decades.

In commemoration of CSW70, IPS spoke with Anna, a 20 year-old Ukrainian activist and member of the UNICEF Global Girl Leaders Advisory Group. This initiative brings together 14 adolescent girl leaders from around the world who work to ensure that the perspectives of women and girls are represented in global decision-making, and present recommendations directly to the UNICEF Executive Board.

Anna was a teenager studying abroad when the conflict in Ukraine erupted, and was unable to return home to her family near the border. Since then, she has experienced significant challenges as a result of the war, compounded by limited access to essential services, such as education and psychosocial support, many of which have been disrupted or placed under strain by the war.

“When war begins, the changes in society are immediate and visible,” said Anna. “Frontlines move, cities are destroyed, and millions of people are forced to leave their homes. When many men go to the front, women often become the pillars holding communities together – running local initiatives, leading volunteer networks, managing businesses, and supporting families.”

Such shifts also bring structural struggles, as many women are forced to leave their homes and move with their children or elderly relatives. Such displacement can cause loneliness and uncertainty, Anna explained. While women take on more responsibility, inequality does not disappear. “Women still face salary gaps, stereotypes about leadership, and the expectation that they should both rebuild society and quietly carry the emotional labor of caring for everyone else. Stopping to fully process everything can feel impossible, because another responsibility, another task, or another crisis immediately takes its place.”

Anna speaking at a UNICEF-supported event dedicated to discussing the challenges and solutions for girls and young women in Ukraine who are not in education, employment or training. Credit: ISAR Ednannia /Serhii Piriev

In Ukraine today, roughly 32 percent of women aged 20-24 and nearly 49 percent of women aged 25-29 are left without access to education, employment, or training, compared to about 16.4 percent and 12.2 percent of men in the same age groups, respectively. In times of conflict, women are often the first to lose these opportunities and the last to regain them. Education for girls is often hardest-hit, as families are displaced and conflicts leave girls to take on added responsibilities to their families and support household incomes. Many are forced to drop out of school to keep their families afloat.

“My own educational journey has been deeply shaped by war. I was first displaced to Poland, and when I returned to Kharkiv for my senior year, continuing my studies was far from easy,” said Anna. “I consider myself incredibly privileged. I had a supportive family that believed in me and helped me keep going. But not every girl has that kind of support system – someone to catch her when she begins to fall behind.”

Additionally, the psychosocial strain of conflict and violence often leaves girls ill-equipped to engage in studies or training programs. With mechanisms for justice, healing, and empowerment for women and girls under attack, these challenges often go unheard, and impunity for sexual violence and abuse persists, leaving girls carrying significant amounts of trauma, anxiety, depression, and fear.

“Girls in crisis often carry a kind of psychological burden that is both invisible and personal – it is not only the direct exposure to violence, but the way war quietly settles into everyday life and into the body,” said Anna. “For many women and girls living near conflict zones, mental health is shaped by the constant proximity to violence. “You wake up, check the news, hear another siren, and feel what we call in Ukrainian a ‘ком в горлі’,’ or a lump in the throat.”

Sexual violence is particularly rampant near conflict zones, with Anna noting a persistent “climate of fear that reaches every woman who hears the story”. She added that many girls in Ukraine grow up with the knowledge that their bodies can become targets of violence. While girls are in school, studying for exams, or volunteering, many carry the awareness that women nearby have endured “unimaginable violence”.

According to a UN report, nearly 54 percent of surveyed countries reported having laws that do not correlate rape with the basis of consent, and roughly 75 percent of surveyed countries have laws that permit the forced marriage of a girl child. Additionally, 44 percent of countries lack laws that guarantee equal pay for women and girls. It is estimated that it could take 286 years to eliminate these gaps.

“The justice women and girls deserve, that is theirs by right, cannot wait. We must collectively pursue it, here at the United Nations, in our national laws and policies, in your court rooms and traditional justice mechanisms. In doing so, we must engage all of society, including men and boys and young people, to contribute to our collective effort for equality,” said Bahous.

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The 60th Anniversary re-enactment of Women's Protest during Women’s War of 1929 Courtesy National Museum Uyo. Source: Black Past
 
Meanwhile, UN Women has recognised the Aba women’s riot of 1929 as a noteworthy women-led demonstration, which ignited the revolution in the defence of women’s rights in Nigeria.

By Deborah Eli Yusuf Tinam
ABUJA, Nigeria, Mar 16 2026 (IPS)

The Aba Women’s Riots of 1929 remain one of the most powerful demonstrations of Nigerian women’s collective resistance. Thousands of market women, farmers, traders, and mothers mobilized across districts in the then Eastern Nigeria to challenge colonial taxation and the extension of warrant chiefs’ authority over their lives. They organized without formal structures and without institutional support.

And yet, they achieved national disruption and forced policy change. When we contrast that era with the landscape of women’s movements today, the differences reveal both how far we have come and what we may have forgotten.

The Aba Women’s Riots were not only a gendered uprising but also a class struggle rooted in the economic exploitation and social restructuring imposed by colonial capitalism. A socialist point of view helps to reveal how colonial rule reshaped relations of production and imposed new class hierarchies that women directly resisted.

Deborah Eli Yusuf Tinam

The mikiri (also known as women’s meetings or associations) were regular assemblies of married women within a community. These networks coordinated economic activity—such as market regulation, collective labour, and mutual aid—and served as forums for political discussion and mobilisation.

British indirect rule dismantled these structures and replaced them with male warrant chiefs, male tax officials, male-controlled courts, and the exclusion of women from any form of decision-making. This represented a patriarchal restructuring of society, in which the colonial state elevated men—especially those who collaborated as local agents of imperial power.

Colonialism did not simply exploit labour; it re-organized gender relations in ways that made women’s labour easier to extract and less politically defended. Thus, the British colonial rule, contrary to the false claim that it helped “democratise” countries or “liberate” women, imposed a system that elevated patriarchy to new heights, so as to serve its interests.

The Abia Women’s Riot of 1929, also known as the Aba Women’s War, was a major protest by women against British colonial rule in southeastern Nigeria. It took place mainly in Aba and the surrounding areas in present-day Abia State.

The protest began in Oloko near Aba after a woman named Nwanyeruwa was questioned by a colonial agent. She informed other women, and soon thousands of women came together to protest. They marched, sang protest songs, and surrounded native courts and the homes of warrant chiefs. They aimed to stop taxation and remove corrupt leaders.

During the two-month “war” at least 25,000 Igbo women were involved in protests against British officials. Thousands of Igbo women congregated at the Native Administration centers in Calabar and Owerri as well as smaller towns to protest both the warrant chiefs and the taxes on the market women.

Using the traditional practice of censoring men through all-night song and dance ridicule (often called “sitting on a man”), the women chanted and danced, and in some locations forced warrant chiefs to resign their positions.

The women also attacked European-owned stores and Barclays Bank and broke into prisons and released prisoners. They also attacked Native Courts run by colonial officials, burning many of them to the ground. Colonial Police and troops were called in. They fired into the crowds that had gathered at Calabar and Owerri, killing more than 50 women and wounding over 50 others. During the two-month “war” at least 25,000 Igbo women were involved in protests against British officials.

Amid the chaos stood Adiaha Adam Udo Udoma, who seized the British officer’s rifle, and in a moment, etched into legend, broke it across a fearless act became a lasting symbol of defiance by the end of the uprising at least 50 women, including Udo Odoma were killed and many more were wounded still the movement endured but the British colonial authority responded with force, and many women were killed and injured.

Despite this, the protest was successful. The colonial government stopped plans to tax women and removed some warrant chiefs. The Abia Women’s Riot remains an important event in Nigerian history. It shows the courage, unity, and strength of women in the fight against injustice and colonial oppression.

One of the first challenges the Aba women faced—one that is no longer as present today—was the complete absence of political recognition. Women at the time were excluded from formal governance; they were not seen as political actors and did not vote (men acquired voting rights earlier than women, although also under restrictions). Their mobilisation first had to assert their political personhood before demanding anything else.

Today, Nigerian women still face underrepresentation, but they are at least acknowledged participants in political discourse. Policies, ministries, gender desks, and advocacy platforms exist, even if imperfectly, and women can push for reforms through both formal and grassroots channels.

Another challenge that women in 1929 had to navigate was communication across vast distances without literacy or technology. They relied on networks, songs, messengers, and market alliances to coordinate action. Today’s organisers benefit from social media, digital advocacy, and rapid mobilisation tools that reduce logistical barriers and amplify voices far beyond local communities.

There are enduring lessons in the way the Aba women mobilised. Their movement was deeply community-rooted; they were not elites speaking on behalf of the masses—they were the masses. Their power came from collective legitimacy, a shared grievance, and a clear strategy that everyone understood.

They also practiced what was essentially feminist organising: solidarity across clans, a refusal to centre individual leaders, and a commitment to nonviolence—until they faced violent repression by colonial forces. Modern movements sometimes struggle with fragmentation, internal rivalry, and the pressure to elevate individual faces rather than collective goals.

In many ways, today’s women’s movements also struggle under the weight of constant “activist trainings”, frameworks, and Western-influenced bourgeois toolkits that can dilute the very agency they are meant to strengthen.

Activism has gradually become “professionalized,” and while capacity-building has its place, it can unintentionally create dependence on external validation before women feel confident enough to act. The Aba women did not wait for workshops on movement-building, advocacy strategy, or leadership; they mobilised because the urgency of their lived experience demanded it. Their power was organic, instinctive, and rooted in shared realities.

When modern movements become overly shaped by imported bourgeois methodologies, they risk losing that raw, community-driven energy that once made women’s uprisings so transformative.

Unlike in 1929, contemporary advocacy now leans heavily on digital spaces, which can distance organisers from rural women whose realities mirror those of the 1929 protesters more than those of urban inhabitants. For example, NGO debates on gender equality frequently centre urban issues—career mobility, political appointments, digital violence—while rural women still grapple with land rights, market taxation, displacement, and insecure livelihoods.

Earlier movements would likely have pushed for deeper integration of rural women’s priorities, since their strength came from women who understood each other’s economic struggles firsthand. Another gap is sustainability. Many modern protests surge in moments of crisis but lose momentum afterwards.

The Aba women maintained long-term pressure because their grievances were tied to everyday survival; they did not have the luxury of moving on. Their consistency and clarity offer a model for building movements that do not fade once headlines end.

Ultimately, if modern women’s movements in Nigeria are to reclaim their power, they must return to the grassroots, where realities are raw, urgent, and unfiltered. Rural women, who often carry the heaviest burdens, should not be an afterthought; they should be the starting point.

And while international support has played a role in pushing gender issues forward, movements should not be dependent on it. The Women’s War of 1929 illustrates how colonial capitalism relied on patriarchy to function, and how women’s oppression was foundational to the colonial economy.

Too many actions today feel cosmetic—grand displays without the heat of real rage or the conviction to disrupt the system in a meaningful way. To move beyond this, organising must be bold, provocative, and grounded in lived experience. Only then can women’s movements break free from inherited templates and reclaim the fearless, self-determined spirit that once defined women’s resistance in this country.

This is the way to place themselves at the forefront of the struggle to dismantle capitalism and patriarchy and establish an egalitarian socialist society.

Deborah Eli Yusuf Tinam, is a development worker, political commentator, and political economy and history enthusiast working at the intersection of peacebuilding, gender equality, youth development and governance. She holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs and Strategic Studies from the Nigerian Defence Academy and has a background in Journalism from Ahmadu Bello University. She is the Vice President of the Young Urban Women Movement Nigeria, a member of RevolutionNow and previously served as the North Central Coordinator of the Take it Back Movement Nigeria.

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The Women in Politics 2026 map from IPU and UN Women was launched at an event at CSW70, 11 March 2026. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown. Source: IPU
 
New Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) – UN Women data show women remain far from equal political power, holding just 22.4 per cent of cabinet posts and 27.5 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide.

By UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 2026 (IPS)

Across the world, women remain vastly under-represented in political leadership, with the most powerful decisions still overwhelmingly made by men. In 2026, only 28 countries are led by a woman Head of State or Government, while 101 countries have never had a woman leader, according to the latest data released by Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women.

When women are shut out of political leadership, decisions that shape peace, security, and economic priorities are made without half of the world’s experience at the table. The new global data reveals stagnation, and in some cases regression, in women’s political leadership, particularly in executive government.

Key findings from the data released by IPU and UN Women include:

o Women hold just 22.4 per cent of cabinet minister positions globally, down from 23.3 per cent in 2024, marking a reversal after years of gradual progress.

o Fourteen countries have achieved gender parity in cabinets, demonstrating that equal representation is possible, yet eight countries still have no women ministers at all.

o Women hold 27.5 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide, up slightly from 27.2 per cent in 2025. The increase of just 0.3 percentage points marks the second consecutive year of the slowest growth recorded since 2017, highlighting how slowly women are advancing in political decision-making power.

o Women are also losing ground in parliamentary leadership. As of January 2026, 54 women serve as Speakers of Parliament globally, representing 19.9 per cent of all Speakers. This represents a nearly four-percentage-point decline from the previous year and the first drop in women Speakers in 21 years.

o Women in politics face rising hostility and intimidation from the public, both online and offline. Seventy-six per cent of women parliamentarians surveyed report experiencing intimidation by the public, compared with 68 per cent of men – a trend that deters women from seeking office and slows progress toward equal political power.

o Even when women reach leadership positions, they are often concentrated in a narrow range of portfolios traditionally linked to social sectors.

o Women lead 90 per cent of gender-equality ministries and 73 per cent of ministries responsible for family and children’s affairs, reinforcing long-standing gender stereotypes in political leadership. Men continue to lead almost exclusively ministries like defense, home affairs, justice, economic affairs, governance, health, and education.

“At a time of growing global instability, escalating conflicts and a visible backlash against women’s rights, shutting women out of political leadership weakens societies’ ability to respond to the challenges they face,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous.

“Women bring perspectives and experience that are essential for making better decisions, preventing conflict and building lasting peace. When women are fully involved in political leadership, countries are more stable, policies work better for people, and societies are better prepared to face the crises shaping our world today.”

“Parity is a moral imperative, because women have an equal right to shape the decisions that govern their lives. But it is also the smart thing to do. Institutions make better decisions when they reflect the societies they serve. They are better able to identify bias, design fairer responses, and earn public trust when women from all backgrounds are present, and influential, at every level,” said IPU President Tulia Ackson.

“The IPU has constantly proven that well-designed quotas and strong political will are essential to speed up change and ensure that women’s voices are heard in democratic decision-making. At the same time, men and women must work together as equal partners to transform political culture, challenge stereotypes, and build inclusive parliaments that reflect the people they represent,” said IPU Secretary General Martin Chungong.

Despite the slow pace of change, women around the world continue to push boundaries and assert their place in political life. Removing structural barriers, including discriminatory laws, violence against women in politics, and unequal access to resources, as well as challenging negative social norms, will be critical to ensuring women’s equal political leadership in the years ahead.

This year’s 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women – (which is scheduled to conclude March 19) the United Nations’ highest-level intergovernmental body that sets global standards for women’s rights and gender equality – is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reverse the rollback of women’s rights.

The future of democracy will be stronger, fairer, and more resilient when women are equally represented in decision-making at all levels.

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A street scene in Kabul.

By External Source
KABUL, Mar 12 2026 (IPS)

In the bone-chilling Afghanistan winter, a woman was dragged into a public square early this year and publicly lashed for a crime she may or not have committed. According to the ruling handed by the Taliban Supreme Court, the woman and the male culprit who was jointly accused of extra-marital affair received 30 lashes each and a one-year suspended prison sentence. The sentence was carried out in the presence of several local officials and residents in a province whose name is left out to protect the victim.

For Roya, (not her real name), a woman whose life has already been scarred by years of psychological and emotional distress, 30 blows of lashes in corporeal punishment amounts to an extra dose of salt into her wound. She lost her husband six years ago, in a traffic accident, leaving her to raise five children as a single mother.

Faced with crushing poverty Roya has worked as a farm laborer on other people’s land, but with the onset of the winter and agricultural work drying up, she migrated to the city where she cleaned houses, washed clothes and hand-stitched embroidered men’s collars under the dim light of a lamp at night. Naqeeba (also not her real name), a neighbor who has known Roya for years, speaks approvingly of her great sense of dignity. The money she earned through this work was little, but Roya never asked anyone for help, says Naqueeba.

She tried to cover the costs of living in whatever way she could and it was the constant need to create job-seeking opportunities by frequent daily travels, which rather became labeled as improper marital relations, bringing on her punishment rather than reward.

“She became a victim of circumstances, not a criminal,” Naqeeba, says, adding, “the charge was false.”

According to Naqeeba, Roya didn’t even get a chance to defend herself. She was on her way home and nearby her own house when she was seized “like a dangerous criminal,” thrown into a vehicle, and taken away without anyone knowing where she was taken to or what she had been accused of.

A Charge She Did Not Deserve

“This was not a simple blow. It was a strike that, as long as she lives, she will never be able to hold her head high again in this neighborhood”, Naqueeba explains further with her voice filled with anger and sorrow. She pauses and continues: “For a week, no one knew whether she was alive or what had happened to her until news of her public flogging emerged”.

The repeated public corporal punishments, especially against women, have not only instilled fear in society but also raised serious questions about justice, human dignity, and the status of women in today’s Afghanistan.

Roya’s story is not just the story of one individual; it reflects the suffering of thousands of women who live in silence under the weight of poverty, loneliness, and restrictions, and who are punished simply for being women. The day she was flogged marked the fourth public corporal punishment of women in that province in less than two months, during December and January a trend that has fueled waves of fear, anxiety, and silence, particularly among women in the region.

According to a report by Hasht e Subh Daily Media, in 2025, the Taliban publicly flogged 225 people in Kabul alone. This means that people were flogged at least every other day in the capital. Several other provinces carried out dozens of public floggings each.

The report reveals that confessions were often extracted under pressure. The accused were denied legal assistance and a fair trial. The Taliban rely on corporal punishment and public displays of force, which violate human rights and cause severe social and psychological consequences for the victims.

The Taliban abolished the Attorney General’s Office and shut down the Independent Bar Association of Afghanistan in November 2021, thus effectively blocking the path to legal defense.

In 2025, Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur along with other UN experts, on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, consistently condemned the Taliban’s increased use of public flogging and other forms of corporal punishment, describing them as “inhuman and cruel”. Throughout the year, he highlighted the alarming rise in these practices, noting that they often occur without due process or fair trial standards.

“The Taliban must immediately end the death penalty and all corporal punishment that amounts to torture or other cruel and inhuman treatment, and respect the rights and dignity of all detainees,” Bennett and other experts stressed.

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Excerpt:

President of the General Assembly Annalena Baerbock

By Annalena Baerbock
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 2026 (IPS)

We have heard it all:
• When a woman raises her voice, she’s too emotional.

• When she stands her ground, she’s too difficult. • When she leads, she’s too ambitious.
• If she wears dark suits they whisper ‘why does she always look like a man’
• But oh my gosh! if she shows up in a colorful dresses and high heels….

• When women lead nations through crises they are lucky.
• Yet if they stumble, it becomes the biggest crisis on earth.
Yes, we have heard it all.

As have generations of women before us – even more directly, and with this tone:

“You act like a woman”. “You run like a girl”.
As if it is something to be ashamed of. Yet history has proved otherwise.

The facts are crystal clear.
We don’t have to negotiate them again.

• When girls remain in school, economies grow, all over the world.
• When women participate in the workforce, productivity rises all around the world.
• When women sit at peace tables, agreements last longer, all around the world.
• When women lead institutions, they are more resilient.

So, ladies, it’s time to flip the narrative. Today we are reclaiming #Likeawoman, boldly and proudly.

As sports star Serena Williams once said: you call us crazy, we’ll show you what crazy can do.

Especially in the midst of backlash, when it can feel as though, we are forced to fight the same old battles again and again.

Battles from 80 years ago when another so called “difficult woman” Dr. Hansa Metha from India showed what #ChangeLikeA Woman can achieve.

By insisting to change one word in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she changed the whole meaning of it – affirming that “all human beings” and not only men are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Especially, dear girls out there.
Next time they tell you again that gender sensitive language or standing up for our reproductive rights is something “woke” Resist like women.

Resist #Like Hansa Metha and remind them that women`s rights are nothing new but have been embedded in the DNA of this institution from the very beginning.

And marking International Women’s Day in 2026 #LikeAWoman means that we will not stop fighting for equal representation and women’s rights – indeed #LikeAwoman: empathetic and ambitious – in suits, and in colorful dresses.

Until the women of Afghanistan are free, and girls worldwide are not being forced anymore to marry before they finish school.

Until we see justice for survivors of sexual abuse, whether it occurs at home or as part of exploitative sexual slavery networks, as exposed in the Epstein files.

Until women are equally paid and represented, whether in newsrooms, in boardrooms, in governments, and yes, at the helm of this institution – our United Nations.

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Anne Hathaway, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, addresses the United Nations Observance of International Women's Day 2026 on the theme: ‘Rights, Justice, Action for ALL Women and Girls.’ Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 2026 (IPS)

On International Women’s Day (March 8), global leaders and advocates gather around the rallying cry to strengthen justice systems for all women and girls in a time of increasing pushbacks on gender equality.

The United Nations held its annual observance of International Women’s Day on March 9, commemorating the day and the beginning of the 70th session of the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW), which will be held from 9-19 March. This year’s theme is on “Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls”. Stakeholders will participate in meetings and side events throughout the next two weeks to deliberate over the issue of justice for women and girls across multiple, complex contexts.

Speakers at the commemorative event, held in the General Assembly Hall, all called for increased investments into strengthening justice systems and to ensure accountability. No country has achieved true gender parity, and in recent years has seen the backsliding of rights for women and girls.

Justice is the “non-negotiable foundation of rights”, said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous. As women’s rights are confronted with an “ever virulent and adaptative” pushback that continues to threaten their place in society. “In its face, we do not back down, we redouble our efforts, we rise higher.”

“Today’s conversation is about closing the gap between the rights women are promised and the justice they actually experience, said Sade Baderinwa, WABC-TV News Anchor. “For the first time in a long time, many young women are questioning whether the progress they were promised is real… Women around the world are asking the same question: “Are we still moving forward?” And the answers will be shaped by the choices we make right now. Progress does not move on its own. It moves because people insist that it must.”

Women’s contributions have demonstrably proven to advance economies and peaceful agendas. Annalena Baerbock, President of the UN General Assembly, reminded the room that within the context of the United Nations, women’s rights are “embedded in this institution from the very beginning”, as seen with the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included key contributions from delegates from India, Pakistan and the Dominican Republic.

When it comes to legal protections, women have only 64 percent of legal rights compared to men. According to UN Women, this leaves them vulnerable to discrimination, violence and exclusion. The rights of women and girls are not enforced equally across the world. Systemic inequalities further complicate this for women and girls and prevent them from seeking justice, such as lack of access to those systems, societal discrimination or fear of retaliation.

“Despite widespread recognition of women’s rights,[…] access to justice remains deeply unequal. Around the world, women and girls still hold only a fraction of the legal rights afforded to men. Discriminatory laws and practices continue to fail the very women they are meant to serve,” said Earle Courtenay Rattray, the Chéf de Cabinete to the UN Secretary-General.

“It’s hard to bear the knowledge that the distance between the promise of equality and the experience of it are yet still so far apart for so many,” said Anne Hathaway. The award-winning actress and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador remarked on the continued efforts of the generations of activists and survivors to advocate for equality in the face of injustice.

“Are we not all tormented that societal progress for all women has, in large part, been in response to extreme gender violence? Are we not tormented by what women like Gisèle Pelicot, Virginia Giuffre and Malala Yousafzai, to name three amongst half the world, have had to endure? These women and girls had the bravery to demand justice when horrific violence was forced on them, and in doing so, by honoring their own right to dignity, changed the world? Are we not tormented by this cost of change?”

Nobel Laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai addresses the addresses the United Nations Observance of International Women’s Day 2026. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

In the face of such systemic injustices, the work and resilience of women and girls must be encouraged and celebrated, Hathaway said.

“Our choosing to celebrate today does not signal that we are here to accommodate injustice. Our celebration today affirms our determination to outlast it.”

Justice has been further complicated in the present age where modern technology can be used to improve access but is also weaponized to enact harm and discrimination. In times of conflict, where women and children are often made most vulnerable, their rights are threatened even when international law call for their protection. There is increasing impunity within systems of inequality that permit the violations of rights.

“Never have I seen so many children suffering from war and violence. Injured and dying at the hands of unaccountable leaders,” said Malala Yousafzai, education activist and Nobel Laureate. She referenced recent events in the Middle East where missile strikes hit schools in Iran, killing more than 150 children.

Afghan musician and singer Sunbul Reha (at podium) addresses the United Nations Observance of International Women’s Day 2026. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

“True justice does not defend the humanity of children in one place then ignored in another. It is not selectively applied…We must ask ourselves why justice is a privilege extending to some and withheld from others.”

Afghanistan is an example of the consequences of rolling back hard-fought rights and legal protections. Since the Taliban took control in 2021, women and girls there have seen a steady rollback of their rights and have been forced out of participating in public life. Yousafzai demanded leaders to “move from sympathy to accountability” in addressing this ongoing crisis. Afghan women and girls are asking for their recognition in law so that the “long work of justice can begin”, she said.

“I know what it means when a girl’s work is silenced. I have lived it,” said Sunbul Reha, an Afghan singer and musician. “Rights that took generations to win are evaporating before our eyes. And still, I remain hopeful. Because girls like me are still learning… Women continue to speak up for their rights, and young people everywhere refuse to give up the fight.”

Reha urged the delegates in the room to fight to “block the erosion” of women’s and girls’ rights. “There are millions of girls standing in spirit with me. They are counting on all of us, and they are counting on you.”

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Credit: Marco Longari/AFP

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 9 2026 (IPS)

Consider what International Women’s Day looked like a few years ago, and what it looks like now: the same date, the same global moment of reflection, but a vastly changed global landscape. Gender rights are facing the most coordinated and wide-ranging attack in decades. Anti-rights forces are dismantling protections secured after generations of struggle, destroying infrastructure built to address gender-based violence and realise reproductive rights and rewriting legal frameworks to roll back rights, with a specific focus on excluding transgender people. This is the result of a deliberate, carefully crafted, handsomely funded and globally coordinated strategy.

Fortunately, resistance is proving harder to extinguish than those driving the backlash had expected. Another International Women’s Day of mobilisation is here to prove it.

A regressive template

While attacks have been building for years, the global landscape shifted quickly in January 2025, when a newly inaugurated Donald Trump signed executive orders imposing a rigid binary classification of sex across federal law, stripping non-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ people in healthcare and housing, and banning diversity, equity and inclusion policies across the federal government. Because the USA had been the world’s largest bilateral donor, the simultaneous dismantling of USAID and expansion of the global gag rule — blocking US funding to organisations that provide abortions or advocate for abortion rights — had immediate effects on women and girls all over the world, with particularly deadly consequences in conflict zones, rural areas and the world’s poorest countries.

Elsewhere, regressive forces were already mobilising – and Trump’s example only emboldened them. Hungary banned Pride marches and authorised surveillance to enforce compliance. Slovakia and the UK redefined sex as exclusively biological, stripping legal recognition from non-binary and transgender people. Burkina Faso criminalised same-sex relations and their ‘promotion’. Trinidad and Tobago’s Court of Appeal reinstated colonial-era penalties for homosexuality of up to 25 years in prison. Kazakhstan introduced a Russian-style ban on positive LGBTQI+ representation in education, media and online platforms.

It’s striking how consistent the underlying logic is across different political and regional contexts: gender equality is framed as a dangerous ‘ideology’, feminism is demonised as a foreign imposition, LGBTQI+ visibility is portrayed as a threat to children. The similarities reflect a coordinated effort to manufacture cultural conflict to consolidate hierarchies, strengthen elite authority and deflect attention from economic and political failures.

The backlash has reached the international institutions that have long served feminist movements as key arenas for developing a common language, setting a shared agenda and coordinating action across borders. A milestone in anti-rights advances was observed at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women’s 69th session last year, where a well-organised anti-rights bloc succeeded in stripping longstanding references to sexual and reproductive health and rights from the meeting’s Political Declaration.

What resistance looks like

Yet regression is not going uncontested: not in the streets, not in the courts and not even in the world’s most repressive settings.

In Hungary, tens of thousands defied the Pride ban in Budapest, risking prosecution to assert their right to be visible in public space. In South Africa, sustained civil society pressure, including over a million signatures demanding action, compelled the government to declare gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster. In St Lucia, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court struck down colonial-era laws criminalising same-sex relations. Courts in Malawi and Nigeria recognised the right to safe abortion for sexual violence survivors. The UK finally repealed a Victorian-era law that had continued to criminalise abortion in England and Wales. Denmark and Norway improved access to abortion services. Marriage equality came into force in both Liechtenstein and Thailand. At least three European Union member states — the Czech Republic, France and Poland — adopted consent-based definitions of rape.

Even in the most difficult of circumstances, under Afghanistan’s system of gender apartheid, women are maintaining underground schools, keeping solidarity networks alive and documenting abuses, setting their sights on future justice processes.

While the list of advances is impressive, some of the most important contemporary victories are invisible: stalled bills, softened provisions, laws not passed because civil society refused to stand aside. An attempt to repeal The Gambia’s ban on female genital mutilation was blocked. Kenya’s anti-LGBTQI+ Family Protection Bill remains stalled. In Latvia, when conservative forces moved in October 2025 to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, large-scale protests and a civil society petition won what could be a crucial delay. These defensive successes rarely make headlines, but they result from sustained, unglamorous advocacy and coalition work. Without them, the most extreme proposals would advance much further and faster.

Rising to the challenge

Recognition of rights is never permanent. It’s won through sustained struggle and can be reversed through organised opposition from those who perceive other people’s rights as a threat to their privilege. Backlash isn’t a historical anomaly but a predictable counter-mobilisation, and civil society has met it as such, by organising, mobilising, litigating and refusing to concede ground.

This is precisely what CIVICUS’s 2026 State of Civil Society Report, set for release on 12 March, sets out to document. The report examines the state of the world and civil society action throughout 2025 and early 2026 – including a dedicated chapter on women’s and LGBTQI+ people’s rights – and reveals strong patterns of resistance. Across regions and political contexts, it shows how civil society understands the scale of the attack and is responding in every possible way.

As this International Women’s Day will once again make clear, the backlash is organised and strong. But so is the resistance.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

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By Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Mar 9 2026 (IPS)

As we observe International Women’s Day (IWD) this year, the global community does so in a time of continuing turbulence, conflicts and uncertainty about the future of our planet.

Such moments remind us once again that women’s equality and empowerment are not only issues concerning women; those are relevant for humanity as a whole – for all of us. This crucial point needs to be internalized by every one of us.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

• Let me underscore here an unacceptable reality: in its eighty years of existence, the United Nations has not yet elected a woman Secretary-General—eight decades, nine men, and not one woman. What an embarrassment – what a shame!

How can an institution that speaks of equality at every podium continue to model inequality at its pinnacle? The credibility of the UN’s advocacy depends on its own reflection in the mirror.

• A stark and undeniable reality of our world today is that patriarchy and misogyny continue to thrive as scourges pulling humanity away from our aspiration to live in a world of equality, peace and justice. No country in the world has reached full legal equality for women and girls.

• In many parts of the world, we are witnessing renewed attempts to undermine the hard-earned gains achieved through decades of advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality.

• Women’s organizations, feminist activists and women human rights defenders remain the courageous voices challenging discrimination and injustice. Their role is indispensable for advancing human dignity and human progress.

• My work has taken me to many parts of the world, and time and again I have seen the transformative impact of women’s leadership and participation in shaping peaceful, inclusive and resilient societies.

We should always remember that without peace, development is impossible, and without development, peace is not achievable – but without women, neither peace nor development is conceivable.

The theme of IWD 2026 – “Rights, Justice, Action: For All Women and Girls” – is both timely and compelling. It reminds us that progress requires not only recognition of rights but also determined action to ensure justice and equality in practice.

Let me assert again that feminism is about smart policy which is inclusive, uses all potential and leaves no one behind.

I am proud to be a feminist. All of us need to be. That is how we make our planet a better place to live for all.

Let me also recall that in the year 2000 on this very day, as the President of Security Council, I had the honor of steering the pioneering statement by the whole Council leading to the conceptual and political breakthroughs paving the way for the consensus adoption of the UNSCR 1325 on 31 October 2000 under the Namibian Presidency.

On this IWD, let us renew our commitment to building a gender-equal world. Our individual actions, conversations and mindsets can transform our larger society.

Together we can make change happen!!!

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations; Initiator of the UNSCR 1325 as the President of the UN Security Council in March 2000; and Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP)

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The world will gather at UN Headquarters in New York for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70)– the UN’ largest annual forum dedicated to gender equality and women’s rights. What happens here influences laws, policies, funding and accountability across countries and generations. This year’s focus is clear: rights, justice and action for all women and girls. The CSW70 will take place March 9-19. Credit: United Nations

By Shihana Mohamed
NEW YORK, Mar 9 2026 (IPS)

International Women’s Day 2026 (IWD 2026), which was commemorated March 8, under the theme, “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls“, calls for action to dismantle all barriers to equal justice: discriminatory laws, weak legal protections, and harmful practices and social norms that erode the rights of women and girls. It demands an end to systemic violence and misogyny, including calls for justice for Epstein survivors.

The independent experts, who serve in their individual capacities under mandates from the UN Human Rights Council, warned that the alleged acts documented in the ‘Epstein Files’ provide disturbing and credible evidence of widespread, systematic sexual abuse, trafficking, and exploitation of women and girls.

The UN experts stated that, “So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity.” They said, “No one is too wealthy or too powerful to be above the law.”

Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.” However, no nation has closed the legal gaps between men and women.

While we are told that women now hold more legal rights than at any point in history, 2026 data reveals a devastating reality: women globally hold only 64 per cent of the legal rights of men.

Thus, the global crisis of women’s safety is not a failure of individual morality; it is a result of structural barriers. For survivors of systemic exploitation, the deepest betrayal lies not in the absence of laws, but in the complicity embedded within the very architecture of gender.

Architecture of Betrayal
We must call out the hypocrisy reinforcing this architecture: the “Socialite-Feminist Paradox.” The Epstein scandal exposed a troubling contradiction within elite social networks. Some influential figures build public personas on the rhetoric of “empowerment of women and girls,” yet privately maintain ties to predatory networks.

This contradiction becomes most striking when individuals who publicly champion gender equality such as high-profile participants in initiatives like HeForShe, are linked to Epstein’s social orbit.

When prominent advocates attach their “feminist” brands to the orbit of known predators, they serve as reputation shields, signaling legitimacy and safety to the outside world. Young women drawn by promises of empowerment trust these figures. They become victims of the very networks those reputations shield.

Within this gender architecture, such actors become the interior designers of impunity, dressing up a house of horrors to resemble a palace of progress.

Support Beams of Hypocrisy
The architecture of betrayal extends to the highest levels of global governance. Jeffrey Epstein maintained a vast network of elite social and financial contacts, including politicians, business leaders, and royalty, exposing how predatory networks can intersect with influential institutions.

Recent scrutiny has intensified following the release of documents connected to the Epstein investigation by the United States Department of Justice, which revealed troubling communications between Emirati diplomat Hind Al-Owais and Epstein.

In early 2026, former Norwegian prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland also faced investigation over alleged “aggravated corruption” and extensive email ties to Epstein, while Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway, publicly apologized for maintaining a friendship with him after his 2008 conviction.

Figures such as Terje Rød-Larsen, former Norwegian diplomat and International Peace Institute President, likewise operated within the same elite UN-linked and international policy circles Epstein sought to access.

These are not just “lapses in judgment”; they are the structural supports that allow predatory systems to persist behind the mask of elite influence and advocacy.

Architecture of Complicity
While individuals failed, prestigious institutions provided the foundation. Major banks, Ivy League universities such as Harvard and MIT, and elite think tanks accepted Epstein’s wealth—often described as “blood money”—in exchange for social legitimacy.

These were not “bystanders”; they were the infrastructure of the abuse. By accepting donations from a known predator, these institutions provided the social cover that allowed the grooming of vulnerable girls to continue.

They signaled to the world – and to the victims – that a billionaire’s endowment was more valuable than a young woman’s safety.

Justice in Flawed Architecture
The ultimate instrument of elite impunity is the statute of limitations. Within this gendered architecture of power, justice is not defeated by evidence but by the calendar. Predators rely on the legal expiration of trauma, counting on time to erode memory, courage, and consequence.

The UN experts urged US Authorities that statutes of limitations preventing prosecution of grave crimes attributed to the Epstein criminal enterprise must be lifted.

As of February 2026, new legislation like Virginia’s Law ((named after Virginia Giuffre) has been introduced to remove these time limits for survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking.

Path Towards Accountability
The survivors of the Epstein network have broken the silence. This IWD 2026, we must break the system that allowed that silence to exist.

We know what happened. Now, we must act; our demands must be absolute:

We must urge governments to use the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) in March 2026 to commit to tangible, measurable progress toward closing the global legal protection gap for survivors.

We must abolish statutes of limitations to ensure that time does not wash away the crimes of the powerful.

We do not want “rights” that can be bought off by a billionaire’s legal team, or “justice” that stops at a non-disclosure agreement.

We must push for legislation that bans “secret” settlements which protect unnamed co-conspirators in trafficking cases. No one – regardless of their political or social status – should be “un-indictable.”

We must stop platforming “rights advocates” who have not fully accounted for their ties to predatory networks. Influence must be earned through integrity, not proximity to power.

We must strip away the “advocate” title from anyone who traded the safety of girls for the social or financial perks of an elite boys’ club.

We must demand that any organization – be it a bank, an Ivy League University, a laboratory, or a non-profit – that knowingly benefits from the proceeds of exploitation be held legally and financially accountable as a co-conspirator.

We must institute legal requirements for institutions to disclose the sources of large private endowments, with strict “vetting clauses” regarding human rights records.

We must redirect assets seized from trafficking and exploitation networks into survivor-led healing funds and legal aid for marginalized women.

We must ensure that justice is not a privilege; it is a fundamental human right that cannot be bought, silenced, or erased by time. We demand action to ensure that ALL women – regardless of the status of their abuser – are equally protected under the law.

The theme of IWD 2026 “Rights. Justice. Action.” is not a request for a seat at the table; it is a demand to dismantle the table where elite impunity is served.

Shihana Mohamed, a Sri Lankan national, is President of Asia Global Network and a US Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project and Equality Now on advancing the rights of women and girls. She is also a founding member and Coordinator of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI). She is a dedicated human rights activist and a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women.

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Credit: UN Women/Marcela Erosa
 
From protection against gender-based violence to equal pay, women and girls remain unequal under the law, as impunity for violations of their rights persists worldwide, said UN Women.

By UN Women
NEW YORK, Mar 5 2026 (IPS)

On 8 March 2026, International Women’s Day, UN Women issues a global alert: justice systems meant to uphold rights and the rule of law are failing women and girls everywhere. Women globally hold just 64 per cent of the legal rights of men, exposing them to discrimination, violence, and exclusion at every stage of their lives.

This is one of the findings of the new United Nations Secretary-General’s report, “Ensuring and Strengthening Access to Justice for All Women and Girls”. The same report reveals that in over half of the world’s countries – 54 per cent – rape is still not defined on the basis of consent, meaning a woman can be raped and the law may not recognize it as a crime.

A girl can still be forced to marry, by national law, in nearly 3 out of 4 countries. And in 44 per cent of countries, the law does not mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value, meaning women can still legally be paid less for the same work.

“When women and girls are denied justice, the damage goes far beyond any single case. Public trust erodes, institutions lose legitimacy, and the rule of law itself is weakened. A justice system that fails half the population cannot claim to uphold justice at all,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous.

As backlash against longstanding commitments on gender equality intensifies, violations of the rights of women and girls are accelerating, fueled by a global culture of impunity, spanning from courts to online spaces to conflict. Laws are being rewritten to restrict the freedoms of women and girls, silence their voices, and enable abuse without consequence.

As technology outpaces regulation, women and girls face growing digital violence in a climate of impunity where perpetrators are rarely held accountable. In conflicts, rape continues to be used as a weapon of war, with reported cases of sexual violence rising by 87 per cent in just two years.

The UN Secretary General’s report also shows that progress is possible: 87 per cent of countries have enacted domestic violence legislation, and more than 40 countries have strengthened constitutional protections for women and girls over the past decade. But laws alone are not enough.

Discriminatory social norms – stigma, victim-blaming, fear, and community pressure – continue to silence survivors and obstruct justice, allowing even the most extreme forms of violence, including femicide, to go unpunished.

Women’s access to justice is also prevented by everyday realities such as cost, time, language, and a deep lack of trust in the very institutions meant to protect them.

This International Women’s Day 2026, under the theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls,” UN Women calls for urgent and decisive action: end impunity, defend the rule of law, and deliver equality – in law, in practice, and in every sphere of life – for all women and girls.

This year’s 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) – the United Nations’ highest-level intergovernmental body that sets global standards for women’s rights and gender equality – is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reverse rollback of women’s rights and ensure justice.

“Now is the moment to stand up, show up, and speak up for rights, for justice, and for action – so that every woman and girl can live safely, speak freely, and live equally,” stressed Bahous.

International’s Women’s Day Commemoration and the opening of CSW70 will take place this year on the same day, back to back, on March 9 2026 in the UN General Assembly, starting at 9:00 a.m. EST and online.

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By External Source
Mar 4 2026 (IPS)

 
Women and girls have never been closer to equality.

And never closer to losing it.

In 1995, 189 governments adopted the Beijing Declaration.

A global promise for the equal rights of all women and girls.

On 8 March 2026, the United Nations International Women’s Day theme is clear:

RIGHTS. JUSTICE. ACTION. FOR ALL WOMEN AND GIRLS.

The call is for equal rights, and equal justice, to enforce, exercise and enjoy those rights.

Because progress is still too slow.

At the current pace, closing legal protection gaps could take 286 years.

Rights written into law are not enough.

Justice means those rights must be enforced.

Yet almost 1 in 3 women has experienced physical or sexual violence.

Women hold only 27.2% of seats in national parliaments.

And just 22.9% of cabinet posts worldwide.

Too many women and girls are still denied protection.

Too many are still shut out of power.

Too many are still failed by the systems meant to protect them.

Aligned with CSW70, this year’s UN focus goes beyond symbolism.

It demands full participation in public life.

It demands the elimination of violence.

It demands equal justice.

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By UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 2026 (IPS)

International Women’s Day 2026 comes at a defining moment: Women and girls have never been closer to equality, and never closer to losing it. Legal protection against domestic violence has expanded in many countries. Yet, the rights of women and girls are being rolled back in plain sight, and across the world, women still do not enjoy the same legal rights as men.

On 4 March, ahead of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), UN Women will launch a report warning that the systems meant to protect women and girls are failing, leaving millions exposed to discrimination, violence and impunity as backlash against gender equality intensifies and violations of fundamental rights rise worldwide.

From 9–19 March, the world will gather at United Nations Headquarters for CSW70 – the United Nations’ largest annual forum dedicated to gender equality and women’s rights. What happens at CSW influences laws, policies, funding and accountability across countries and generations.

This year’s focus is clear: rights, justice and action for all women and girls.

CSW70 is a defining test: whether the world choses to act together and deliver equality before the law for all women and girls or allow injustice to persist with impunity. UN Women calls on governments, partners, institutions and communities everywhere to stand up, show up and speak up for rights, justice and action – so all women and girls can live safely, speak freely and exist equally.

Meanwhile, four years into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than 5,000 women and girls have been killed and 14,000 injured, with 2025 being the deadliest year yet – and the real toll likely far higher.

As the war intensifies and energy attacks cripple daily life, a third crisis is tightening its grip on women and girls: collapsing funding for women-led and women’s rights organizations, the very lifeline keeping women and girls alive, protected and supported.

As humanitarian needs surge, women’s rights and women-led organizations across Ukraine are being driven toward collapse, with deep funding cuts dismantling front-line protection systems and forcing lifesaving services for women and girls to scale back or shut down.

A new UN Women report, The Impact of Foreign Assistance Cuts on Women’s Rights and Women-Led Organizations in Ukraine, documents the scale of the funding crisis and its impact on the lives of women and girls.

One in three women’s rights and women-led organizations surveyed warn they may only survive six months or less with current funding levels. Due to cuts in 2025 and 2026, women-led organizations in Ukraine are projected to lose at least USD 52.9 million by the end of the year.

Women’s rights and women-led organizations surveyed warn they will be forced to stop life-saving services to at least 63,000 women and girls in need in 2026. Those hit first and hardest are those already most at risk: women and girls in front-line and rural areas, older women, women-headed households, and women and girls with disabilities will be cut off from protection, humanitarian aid, and recovery at a time of escalating danger.

As shown in the report developed by the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) Working Group in Ukraine – co-chaired by UN Women, NGO Girls and CARE Ukraine – the effects of the funding cuts are compounded by a growing nationwide energy crisis and an increase in attacks.

While Ukrainian women’s organizations continue to deliver on their mandates, their operational capacity, access to populations in need, and the well-being of their staff are severely impacted by energy cuts. This is especially urgent today when millions of Ukrainians are deprived of essential services, including electricity, heating and water.

“Women’s organizations in Ukraine are the first to stand with women and girls in crisis – and the force behind sustaining protection, dignity and hope. The current funding cuts are severing their life-saving operations. While UN Women continues to work with and invest in women’s organizations in Ukraine, more sustained funding is needed so that they can keep delivering essential services”.

“This is the only way women and girls can have a full and meaningful role in shaping gender-responsive recovery and building a just and lasting peace,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous.

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Pyari Hessa (#07) in action for Jamshedpur FT. Credit: Jamshedpur FC

By Diwash Gahatraj
DELHI, Feb 20 2026 (IPS)

Pyari Hessa, 26, balances long shifts as a loco traffic controller at a steel company in Jamshedpur with evening football practice on the same turf where professionals train.

A trans woman from the Ho tribal community, she was born Pyare Lal in Bedamundui, a remote village 50 kilometres away from Chaibasa, the headquarters town of the West Singhbhum district in Jharkhand. For years, she fought against family expectations and societal norms for the right to live authentically and to be seen simply as a person.

Today, as captain and striker for Jamshedpur FT( Football Team) in India’s first-ever football tournament dedicated to transgender women, the Transgender Football League, her fight for acceptance finds powerful expression on the pitch.

League match action between Jamshedpur FC and Chaibasa FC. Photo Credit: Jamshedpur FC

Launched on December 7, 2025, under the Jamshedpur Super League (JSL) by Jamshedpur Football Club (FC), this groundbreaking eight-team tournament brings together around 70 transgender women, many hailing from Santhal, Ho, and other local tribal communities. Hosted at the JRD Tata Sports Complex’s artificial football turf, the league features a fast-paced seven-a-side format.

The players come from different walks of life; some are factory workers, daily wage labourers, stage performers, e-rickshaw drivers, and more, from areas like Chaibasa, Chakradharpur, Noamundi, Saraikela, and beyond, competing not only for goals but also for visibility, dignity, and a true sense of belonging. In this space, they are celebrated for their skill, passion, and teamwork, transcending societal barriers and redefining inclusion through sport.

Kundan Chandra, head of Grassroots and Youth Football at Jamshedpur FC, explains the club’s thinking.

“The introduction of the Transgender Football League marks a progressive and meaningful step in our commitment to making football inclusive, accessible, and empowering for every individual. As a club we firmly believe that football must serve as a platform where talent is nurtured without discrimination.”

For players like Pyari Hessa, that belief is no longer just words. “When I’m playing football, it gives me immense happiness and gives me recognition. The game gives me a chance to rise above my gender identity. It gives me a platform,” Pyari says.

Life wasn’t easy for her, neither at home nor in her search for stable employment.

A Bachelor of Arts graduate, she lost her father at a young age and now lives with her mother in Jamshedpur, far from her ancestral tribal village. Before securing a job, she took on odd jobs as a daily wage worker to make ends meet. Eventually, she found employment in the logistics department of one of India’s leading steel manufacturers under their targeted hiring for under-represented groups.

More league match action between Jamshedpur FC and Chaibasa FC. Credit: Jamshedpur FC

Her tribal identity profoundly shapes her life, but as a trans woman, she faces additional layers of hardship. Traditional tribal communities in Jharkhand, rooted in customs, nature worship, and social norms, often do not accept transgender individuals with the respect they deserve, leading to exclusion, stigma, and limited family or community support.

Jharkhand is home to over 30 indigenous tribes. The culture and social position of transgender people within the tribal (Adivasi) communities here are complex and generally marked by limited traditional recognition or acceptance.

Journey From Village to Pitch

“I started playing football at ten, just like any other boy in my village. We’d kick around plastic balls on the village ground, purely for fun, nothing more,” Pyari says. “When I was in college, I met people from the trans community who played in charity and exhibition matches around Chaibasa. That’s when I realised football wasn’t just a game for me anymore—it gave me a reason to keep going and grow.”

“In those local matches, the winning trans team would get cash and be honoured. Before every game, the organisers would announce to the crowd: ‘Don’t pass gender comments, don’t disturb the players—give them the respect they deserve.’ Hearing that it felt like a small victory.”

Pyari shares these memories with a quiet pride. After winning her match on 25 January, her team triumphed 4-1 against Chaibasa FC.

According to coach Sukhlal Bhumij, who trains Pyari and the other team members, “Trans matches are being played between eight teams, and it happens every alternate Sunday and should be over by April.”

Saraikela FC (yellow) versus Indranagar FC (red) in league competition. Credit: Jamshedpur FC

Love for the Game

Football enjoys a passionate and deeply rooted following in Jharkhand, especially among its tribal communities. In rural villages, children play barefoot on open grounds from a young age, making it a daily part of life and culture. While cricket remains popular, football thrives at the grassroots level through local tournaments and has gained further momentum with Jamshedpur FC in the Indian Super League, where fan groups proudly celebrate tribal identity, explains Bhumij, an All India Football Federation (AIFF) C-License coach.

The sport also empowers many, particularly tribal girls and transgender players, transforming village fields into powerful spaces of pride, inclusion, and social change.

In districts like West Singhbhum, informal transgender exhibitions and charity matches have long been organised by village committees and community groups, often as one-off events, charity fundraisers, or parts of local tournaments to promote visibility and respect.

Puja Soy, one of the league’s highest scorers with seven goals from six matches, says football is finally bringing her community real recognition. The 23-year-old Jamshedpur FT standout, a professional stage dancer who completed her Class 10 education, now lives independently in Jamshedpur. Born as Shoray Soy, she moved away from her parents in DiriGoda village for her higher education and better life.

Sharing the harsh realities she faces off the pitch, Puja says, “No flat owners want to rent houses to people from our community.” Finding even this place was a struggle.” She currently shares a single-room home with another trans woman in Jamshedpur.

Jharkhand aligns its policies for transgender persons with India’s Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, allowing individuals to self-identify as the third gender and obtain a Certificate of Identity without mandatory medical proof. Key benefits include inclusion in the OBC category for reservations in education and government jobs, a monthly social security pension of ₹1,000 (about USD 10), dedicated transgender OPDs in government hospitals for discrimination-free care, and access to schemes such as Ayushman Bharat health insurance, scholarships, skill development programmes, and shelter support. The state has also established a Transgender Welfare Board and support unit to facilitate implementation.

However, community members say the reality on the ground differs sharply from what’s written on paper. Despite these provisions, transgender women frequently miss out on job opportunities. To survive, many resort to begging at traffic lights or highway toll points, while others turn to sex work. One player in the league, speaking on condition of anonymity, shared that she plays football during her leisure time but, lacking employment, often stands at highway toll booths or traffic signals to beg from passersby.

Begging by transgender persons has become a common sight on Indian streets and in markets—so normalised that society has largely accepted it as inevitable, even as progressive policies promise a different future.

Freedom on the Field

Back at the practice grounds of the JRD Tata Sports Complex, Pyari is ready for the evening session. Cleats laced up, ball at her feet, she looks focused.

“I can’t come for practice every day because of my shift work,” she says with a small smile. “But whenever my shift ends in the late afternoon, I make sure to come here. This is where I feel free.”

As Pyari starts dribbling, moving the ball smoothly across the turf, it feels like more than just football. With every touch and turn, she’s juggling her job, her life as a trans woman, her tribal roots, and her dreams, all in perfect rhythm, just like the way she controls the ball. In this field, everything seems to fit.

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A young female domestic worker was doing housework for her employer in Manila, the Philippines. Credit: ILO Asia and the Pacific/J. Aliling

By the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb 11 2026 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic reminded everyone how important care work is to daily life. When schools closed and hospitals filled up, often it was women and girls who stepped up at home. Their contributions made a big difference, yet these responsibilities often go unseen and unrewarded.

“For me, care work is the heart of humanity,” says Leah Payud, a resilience portfolio manager at Oxfam Pilipinas. “It anchors societies, families… and keeps them running. Without someone investing time, effort and resources in essential care tasks like cooking, cleaning, childcare, nursing the elderly and sick at home, nothing else would be possible.”

Strong social norms persist in the region where care tasks are automatically handed over to women and girls. On average, women and girls across the Asia-Pacific region spend two to five times more time doing unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) than men.

In Viet Nam, women spend close to 19 hours a week on unpaid care, while men spend about 8 hours. In Malaysia and the Philippines, the gap is also clear. Women’s UCDW labour was valued at 1.6 times that of men. Despite working similar hours in paid jobs, women still take on most of the care responsibilities at home.

These care demands limit women and girls’ time, energy and ability to receive a full education or join the workforce. In 2023, fewer than half of working-age women in the Asia-Pacific region were employed, compared to nearly three-quarters of men. Many cited caregiving as the reason.

Meanwhile, paid care services remain underinvested in and undervalued. Those from marginalized or disadvantaged communities particularly bear the brunt due to low wages and relatively poor working conditions.

Experts further agree that supporting care work is good for families and the economy. A study by the International Labour Organization found that investing in care services like childcare and elder care could create up to 280 million jobs around the world by 2030. Most of these jobs would go to women. In Asia and the Pacific, recognizing unpaid care work could potentially add $3.8 trillion to the economy.

For those women in formal jobs and women entrepreneurs, the lack of care services can contribute to women dropping out of the workforce and being unable to grow and scale their businesses respectively. They face additional challenges, including the ‘motherhood employment penalty,’ ‘motherhood wage penalty,’ and ‘motherhood leadership challenge.’

Post-pandemic, ASEAN leaders have been paying more attention to this issue. In 2021, ASEAN introduced the ASEAN Comprehensive Framework on the Care Economy. It encouraged countries to invest in better care services and recognize the value of both paid and unpaid care work.

This Framework called for concrete steps to expand care services and support care workers, reflecting ASEAN’s broader goal of building inclusive communities.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and ASEAN also have been working together to strengthen care systems across the region. Through joint research, policy dialogue and technical support, the partnership helps turn data into action.

Together, ESCAP and ASEAN bring expert analysis to highlight the value of care work and support Member States to translate these insights into national policies. In 2023, ESCAP co-hosted a regional forum on care work with ASEAN.

The event brought together policymakers, community leaders and experts from across the region to share ideas on what support caregivers need most, while also delving into gender-responsive and care-sensitive policies and programs.

The topic gained further momentum when Lao PDR hosted the Third ASEAN Women Leader’s Summit in 2024, backed by capacity building and knowledge support from ESCAP and various development partners.

The Summit led to a new Declaration on Strengthening the Care Economy adopted by ASEAN leaders later that year, which recognizes the disproportionate presence of women in both the formal and informal care sectors, and identifies a range of gender-responsive priority actions.

“To create lasting change, we must prioritize transformative policies that recognize and redistribute the care burden equitably, without reinforcing traditional gender roles and norms. By promoting shared responsibility for caregiving among all members of society, we can pave the way for more meaningful opportunities for women to realize their full potential and empower women and girls to dream big and reach far,” says Cai Cai, Chief of the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Section at ESCAP.

Many ASEAN countries are already taking action. Indonesia has launched a Care Economy Roadmap and National Action Plan (2025-2045). Cambodia is close to finalizing its own national action plan. Malaysia is developing a strategy to grow its care industry.

In the Philippines, care services are being strengthened through provincial and national care ordinances. Lao PDR is integrating care into both the Laos Women’s Development Plan 2026-2030 and the 10th Five-Year National Socio-Economic Development Plan. Timor-Leste is working on a new Domestic Workers Law and has set up a national Working Group on Care.

Together, these efforts reflect a shared regional commitment to making care more visible, accessible and valued.

Looking ahead, ASEAN’s next community vision presents an opportunity to make care and gender equality a stronger part of the region’s development story. Mainstreaming them across all three ASEAN community pillars will ensure ASEAN can harness all of its vast resources to accelerate progress towards achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG 5 on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, with Target 5.4 aiming to recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work.

Care touches every part of life. Supporting care is not just about new policies. It is about recognizing the needs of real people from every background and building systems that respond to them. When we recognize and invest in care, we create more chances for women to work, for families to thrive and for communities to grow stronger.

The article was prepared with substantive input contributed by Channe Lindstrom Oguzhan, Social Development Division.

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Girl at computer. Credit: UNFPA Central African Republic/Karel Prinsloo
 
A bold action by governments, tech companies, and all communities is needed to confront the rising tech-facilitated GBV that is silencing women’s voices and threatening hard-won gains in Africa.

By Sennen Hounton and Lydia Zigomo
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 7 2026 (IPS)

New estimates show that violence against women and girls remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations in the world – and that one of its fastest-growing frontiers is the digital space.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence includes online harassment, cyberstalking, image-based abuse, deepfake exploitation and coordinated digital attacks, and all of these are proliferating.

Anonymous accounts, weak reporting systems, and limited legal consequences have enabled perpetrators to weaponize technology to shame, silence, and violate women and girls at unprecedented scale and speed.

Africa is no exception.

Across the continent, disturbing patterns are emerging: Girls are facing cyberbullying and sextortion. Women leaders and human rights defenders are disproportionately targeted through coordinated online abuse designed to intimidate them out of public life.

During elections, women in public roles report harassment, smear campaigns and doxxing – tactics meant to silence civic participation.

In humanitarian settings – from the Sahel to the Lake Chad Basin to Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – displaced women and girls rely on digital tools to stay connected and access essential services.

Yet these same tools expose them to surveillance, extortion, blackmail and exploitation.

In conflict contexts, online threats have escalated into offline consequences – including intimidation, detention and physical violence.

Despite the scale of the problem, most cases remain invisible because technology companies, justice systems and communities have not kept pace. Reporting mechanisms are often ineffective.

Digital safety is rarely taught in schools or homes. Survivors face retaliation and victim-blaming. Perpetrators, and the platforms that enable them, are almost never held accountable.

The consequences are severe. Technology-facilitated violence impacts mental health, restricts mobility, destroys livelihoods and erodes confidence. “This virtual world can have real emotional impacts. It’s not enough to say ignore it or log off,” a 24-year-old woman in Chad told UNFPA.

Other young women in Africa also describe witnessing or experiencing harms with real-world impacts: “My page was hacked, I was forced to do things against my will,” a 31-year-old woman from Liberia said.

“Someone had published naked photos and videos of me in our local village Facebook group,” a young woman in Kenya shared. “I gathered the courage and went to a police station to report the incident. The officers I spoke to first admonished me and told me that this was not a criminal case, but rather a case of indecent behaviour on my part.”

In aggregate, these harms are reshaping the digital public sphere in ways that exclude women and girls.

When girls abandon online learning for fear their images may be misused, or when women delete their accounts to escape harassment, societies lose leadership, innovation and the voices essential to progress.

Gender equality cannot advance when half the population is pushed out of digital spaces.

That is why UNFPA and partners convened the first-ever Africa Symposium on Technology-facilitated Gender-based Violence in November, convening leaders in digital rights and gender-based violence prevention and response. It is time to build alliances and explore solutions. Africa is home to multiple hubs of technological innovation, and to the world’s youngest population.

As the digital divide slowly closes, we must ensure that the technology being adopted is safe, private and secure, and does not reinforce or amplify existing gender and social inequalities.

Symposium attendees recognized the need for a bold, coordinated response, one that follows the same principles that guide all efforts to end gender-based violence: dignity, consent, confidentiality, privacy, and survivor-centered care.

We must create a world where “African innovators lead the way in designing digital ecosystems that are safe, ecosystems that are inclusive and empowering for all, and in particular for women and marginalized communities,” said Judy Karioko, from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) in Kenya, at one of the Symposium’s sessions.

UNFPA is committed to making every space – physical or digital – safe for women and girls in all their diversity. Through the Making All Spaces Safe programme, supported by Global Affairs Canada, concrete action is being taken across Africa, including Benin, Ghana, Kenya and Tunisia, to integrate technology risks into efforts to end gender-based violence.

But no single institution can end digital violence alone. Governments, tech companies, educators, civil society, faith leaders, families – and every digital citizen – share responsibility.

The world’s future begins with Africa. As a region, and as a global community, we cannot wait. Because if we fail to make the online world safe, we fail to protect the future of girls, and the world growing up in the digital age.

Dr. Sennen Hounton is the UNFPA Regional Director for West and Central Africa, while Ms. Lydia Zigomo is the UNFPA Regional Director for East and Southern Africa

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

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Tercer Piso. Source Amnesty International

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 23 2025 (IPS)

Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, once made a highly debatable distinction between “friendly” right-wing “authoritarian” regimes (which were mostly U.S. and Western allies) and “unfriendly” left-wing “totalitarian” dictatorships (which the U.S. abhorred).

Around the same time, successive U.S. administrations were cozying up to a rash of authoritarian regimes, mostly in the Middle East, widely accused of instituting emergency laws, detaining dissidents, cracking down on the press, torturing political prisoners and rigorously imposing death penalties.

Kirkpatrick’s distinction between user-friendly right-wing regimes and unfriendly left-wing dictators prompted a sarcastic response from her ideological foe at that time, former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who shot back: “It seems to me that if you’re on the rack (and being tortured), it doesn’t make any difference if your torturer is right-handed or left-handed.”

Last month, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, warned that rigorous oversight of security and policing trade fairs is necessary to prevent prohibited and inherently abusive law enforcement equipment hitting the market after such items were found on display at Milipol 2025, an arms and security trade fair held in Paris from 18 to 21 November.

“Direct-contact electric shock devices, multiple kinetic impact projectiles and multi-barrel launchers cause unnecessary suffering and ought to be banned,” Edwards said. “Their trade and promotion should be prohibited across all 27 EU Member States and globally.”

Under the EU Anti-Torture Regulation – first introduced in 2006 and strengthened in 2019 – companies are banned from promoting, displaying or trading certain equipment that can be used for torture or ill-treatment. In 2025, the EU further expanded the list of prohibited and controlled law enforcement items, according to a UN press release.

Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), the largest international organization that treats survivors and advocates for an end to torture worldwide, told IPS as the largest torture rehabilitation organization in the world, the Center for Victims of Torture supports the Special Rapporteur and the campaign to stop companies marketing, promoting and selling goods that are designed solely to inflict human suffering.

Torture is a crime under international law and is illegal everywhere and at all times. Companies should not be able to market and trade goods that are routinely abused by security forces to commit human rights violations, or have no purpose other than to inflict torture, he said.

“At CVT we work with traumatized survivors of torture every day. Many are refugees who have come from countries where security forces use the sort of devices that were on sale at the fair. The European Union has been a key partner in the campaign to establish torture-free trade.”

“It is unconscionable that companies are allowed to promote these products inside the EU. It is grotesque that such products even exist. This trade in human cruelty should be completely banned,” declared Adams.

A wide range of equipment previously identified by the UN Special Rapporteur as “inherently abusive” was on display at the fair. Offending equipment found on display or being promoted included direct-contact electric shock weapons (batons, gloves and stun guns), spiked anti-riot shields, ammunition with multiple kinetic impact projectiles, and multi-barrel launchers, according to the UN.

These products were marketed by Brazilian, Chinese, Czech, French, Indian, Israeli, Italian, Kazakh, North Macedonian, South Korean, Turkish and US companies.

Among the new banned items under EU law are aerial systems that deliver “injurious quantities of riot control agents,” yet companies were promoting drones fitted with multi-barrel launchers capable of dispersing large quantities of chemical irritants.

After Milipol organisers were notified of the items, swift action was taken, demanding companies remove catalogue pages and items. Edwards said one state-owned company refused to comply and its stall was shut down.

“The continued promotion of inherently abusive weapons underscores the urgent need for States to adopt my 2023 report recommendations,” the expert said.

While welcoming recent EU steps to strengthen controls, Edwards stressed that regional action alone is insufficient.

“The discoveries made at Milipol show why a global, legally binding Torture-Free Trade Treaty is essential,” the UN Special Rapporteur said. “Without coordinated international regulation, abusive equipment will simply find new markets, new routes and new victims.”

She urged all organisers of security, defence and policing exhibitions worldwide to establish robust monitoring, enforce bans consistently, and cooperate fully with independent investigators.

“Milipol’s response was swift and responsible,” the expert said. “But the fact that banned items were exhibited at all shows that constant vigilance is essential.”

Edwards had raised these issues on previous occasions and will continue to monitor relevant developments.

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Women in peace and security. Credit: UNOAU/Sandra Barrows

By Elizabeth Eilor
WINDHOEK, Namibia, Dec 22 2025 (IPS)

Last November, the streets of Windhoek came alive with the sound of drums and brass as a marching band led a procession of women from Namibia’s Defence and security forces.

Dressed in uniform and walking in unity, they marched not only in celebration but in remembrance of a promise made 25 years ago on 31 October 2000—when the world adopted United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

The resolution reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction, and to protect women and girls from gender-based violence.

Resolution 1325 transformed how the world views women’s roles in peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and recovery. It affirmed a truth too long overlooked: that peace is neither sustainable nor just when half of society is excluded from decision-making. It placed women at the centre of efforts to prevent conflict, rebuild nations, and safeguard human rights.

It is fitting that Namibia hosts this silver-anniversary commemoration. Twenty-five years ago, the country made history by presiding over the UN Security Council meeting that adopted the landmark resolution.

Since then, Namibia has continued to turn words into action—integrating gender perspectives into national security policies, ensuring women’s participation in peacekeeping, and promoting women’s leadership from the grassroots to the highest levels of government. The country’s record speaks for itself: a female President, Vice-President, Speaker of Parliament and has one of the world’s most gender-balanced Cabinets.

Namibia was also among the first African nations to adopt a national action plan on Women, Peace and Security, and continues to shape the regional agenda through the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU). The country’s progress demonstrates that when political will aligns with gender equality, transformation follows.

The anniversary, held under the theme “Honouring the Legacy, Advancing the WPS Agenda,” has brought together women from across the continent. From the vibrant street procession to consultative dialogues with civil society and youth, every moment has reflected a shared conviction—that women’s participation is essential to building lasting peace.

For the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU), this milestone carries deep meaning.

UNOAU works hand-in-hand with the African Union Commission to strengthen women’s roles across peace processes, governance reforms, and mediation efforts. Through our joint initiative, ‘She Stands for Peace’, we honour African women who have transformed their communities through courage, innovation, and leadership.

The third edition of the book—launched in Windhoek—profiles these remarkable changemakers whose stories remind us that peace grows stronger when women lead.

As we mark 25 years of progress, the UN reaffirms its commitment to advancing the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The promise of Resolution 1325 remains as urgent today as it was in the year 2000: to ensure that women are not just protected from conflict but are also empowered to prevent and resolve it.

Namibia’s journey stands as an inspiration to Africa and the world. Its legacy reminds us that the spirit of 1325 lives not in resolutions alone, but in the actions of nations that choose to make peace inclusive and enduring. It lives in every woman who chooses dialogue over division and leadership over silence.

As we look to the next 25 years, may every nation follow Namibia’s example—proving once again that when women lead, peace endures.

Elizabeth Eilor is Senior Gender Advisor, United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU) in Addis Ababa.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

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A global crackdown on civic freedoms is intensifying – and women are on the frontlines of the attack. CIVICUS’s 2025 People Power Under Attack report analyses the extent to which freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly are being respected or violated. The report reveals that people in 83 countries now live in conditions where their freedoms are routinely denied, compared to 67 in 2020. In 2020, 13 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries where civic freedoms were broadly respected; now it’s more like 7 per cent. Among the most documented violations in 2025 were detention of human rights defenders, journalists and protesters, and women human rights defenders (WHRDs) were among the most affected.

Reylynne Dela Paz

WHRDs are women and girls, in all their diversity, working on any human rights issue, and those who promote women’s and girls’ rights and gender justice. They include people in civil society who might not self-identify as human rights defenders and those who work in fields such as environmental activism, humanitarian response, journalism and peacebuilding.

WHRDs are at a higher risk of being discriminated against and abused not only for what they do, but also because of who they are. By virtue of their gender identity, they challenge societal norms and patriarchal structures. The 2025 People Power Under Attack report, for example, documents numerous examples of online intimidation and threats against women journalists, both because of their journalistic work and because they’re women.

Attacks against women and girls in general and WHRDs in particular are increasingly being fuelled by rising authoritarian rule, fundamentalism and populism. Governments, politicians and non-state groups are taking more confident and strident anti-rights actions, fuelling an environment where repression and violence against WHRDs is not only possible but celebrated.

Anti-rights networks, led by populist politicians and fundamentalist religious groups, are engaging in coordinated, sustained and increasingly influential work to stigmatise campaigns for women’s rights and gender justice and those involved in them. They spread the idea that gender justice and those who strive for it threaten children’s welfare, families, religious beliefs, national security and traditional and cultural norms. They’re manipulating public narratives and weaponising disinformation to gain public support.

This has given rise to decreased support for HIV prevention projects, queer movements, sexual, reproductive health and rights initiatives, women’s and girls’ participation in decision-making spaces and any human rights effort led by women, including those on climate and environmental justice, disability, Indigenous rights and peace and security.

CIVICUS’s Stand As My Witness Campaign, which calls for the release of unjustly detained human rights defenders, shows how brutal the current context is for WHRDs. It documents stories of violent arrests, inhumane treatment and other cruel actions against women who have dedicated their lives to pursuing justice and resisting repressive governments. WHRDs Pakhshan Azizi, Sharifeh Mohammadi and Verisheh Moradi are facing death sentences in Iran. Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian human rights activist and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023, has also been imprisoned repeatedly for her work.

Other WHRDs who have been arbitrarily arrested include Chow Hang-Tung from Hong Kong, who advocated for the protection and promotion of labour rights and the rights of persecuted human rights defenders in mainland China, Marfa Rabkova, coordinator of Viasna Center for Human Rights’ network of volunteers in Belarus, Kenia Hernandez, coordinator of Zapata Vive, a peasant movement that defends land rights in Mexico, and Hoda Abdel Moneim, a human rights lawyer from Egypt.

I know a mother who helped farmers learn about their rights but was falsely accused of illegally possessing firearms. She was dragged from her house carrying her newborn child. I recall an old woman who has spent her days helping empower Indigenous people but who was harshly arrested and denied medical treatment while in jail, a trans woman who joined a protest and was arrested for no other reason than being a trans protester, and a girl activist who was harassed online for sharing her thoughts against child marriage.

Beyond commemoration

These few painful stories represent only a fraction of reality. The problem is systemic. The world is dominated by cowardly rulers who draw confidence and power from dominant systems of patriarchy and support from anti-rights networks. The restriction of freedoms online and offline make it more difficult and dangerous to hold those in power accountable.

The intensifying repression of civic space, as documented in People Power Under Attack, demands coordinated and sustained action to defend and support the work of activists, human rights defenders and journalists. Increasing threats against WHRDs demand a proactive response to dismantle the gender discriminatory norms and patriarchal rules that underpin and enable human rights violations.

There’s a great need for intersectional protection mechanisms and gender transformative responses from national, regional and international human rights institutions. It’s time for policies that protect human rights defenders but also recognise the distinct needs and lived experiences of WHRDs in all their diversity.

Multilateral institutions should hold member states to account for the international commitments they have made. Regional and global intergovernmental institutions should invest in closely monitoring the situation of WHRDs and in protecting them, and hold perpetrators accountable for abuses. There should be increased investment and coordinated efforts to promote gender justice as part of human rights and respond to the disinformation and false narratives being spread online by governments and the private sector.

The Sustainable Development Goals, backed by all states when they were agreed in 2015, recognise gender equality as a fundamental part of achieving sustainable development, yet little effort has gone into ensuring the people who strive for this are safe and able to work. Women and girls play a vital role in the pursuit of peace and justice, but they increasingly suffer. They don’t need to be merely recognised and remembered: they need to be protected and supported in the face of growing attacks.

Reylynne Dela Paz is Advocacy Lead at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

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Women’s rights have steadily eroded in Afghanistan since 2021. Credit: UN Women
 
The recent blackout exposed how vital the Internet has become for Afghan women and how, when that connection is lost, hope fades and isolation takes hold.

By UN Women
NEW YORK, Oct 22 2025 (IPS)

When the Taliban recently cut off the Internet and phone networks across Afghanistan, millions of women and girls were silenced. For those with connectivity, the blackout severed their last link to the outside world – a fragile connection that had kept education, work, and hope alive.

Many women in Afghanistan still lack access to the Internet, a basic phone, or the literacy to use digital tools. For those that do, that connection is a rare lifeline to life-saving services and the outside world.

For now, access has largely been restored. But the message was clear: in Afghanistan, this valuable gateway to learning, expression, and services for women and girls can be shut down at any moment.

Afghan women are already banned from secondary and higher education, from most forms of work, and public spaces such as parks, gyms, and sports clubs.

Many women are also receiving humanitarian aid, including in earthquake-affected eastern Afghanistan, and among those returning – many forcibly – from Iran and Pakistan.

The digital and phone blackout intensified feelings of stress, isolation and anxiety among women and girls.

Women entrepreneurs participate in business development training in a UN Women-supported Multi-Purpose Women’s Centre in Parwan province, eastern Afghanistan in January 2025. Photo: UN Women/Ali Omid Taqdisyan

What happens when Afghan women and girls go offline?

In Afghanistan, the impact of Internet and phone blackouts falls more heavily on women and girls. It eliminates what is, for many, a final means of learning, earning, and connecting.

When women and girls lose Internet access, they lose the ability to:

• Access aid: Those who are connected can use the Internet or phones to find out about support available, and aid agencies rely on connectivity to continue operations.
• Learn about disasters: Recent data shows 9 per cent of women use the Internet to access information on climate disasters.
• Seek services and reporting mechanisms for survivors of gender-based violence or those at risk.
• Learn: Online classes and study groups were a lifeline for girls banned from secondary schools, and women banned from universities.
• Work: Online businesses are a vital source of income for many women to sustain their families after being pushed out of many formal roles.
• Connect: Social apps and social media provided safe spaces to support one another and exchange information.
• Be visible: For women already excluded from public life, the digital world is one the last places to exist and resist.

For more on what life looks like for women in Afghanistan today, see our FAQs.

Going dark in the middle of humanitarian crises

The national internet blackout started a month after a 6.0 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan on 31 August, with major aftershocks continuing throughout September and the emergency response and early recovery continuing.

Despite facing many challenges, women-led organizations have played a crucial role delivering life-saving aid and services to women and girls affected by the earthquake, and Afghan women and girl returnees from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan.

During the blackout, NGOs were forced to halt humanitarian operations and cease field missions to emergency sites. Staff could not process payments or place orders for essential goods destined for women and their families.

When banks went offline, women affected by humanitarian crises were unable to access emergency cash assistance to buy essentials such as food.

The shutdown also made it much harder for survivors of gender-based violence to access help at a time when household tensions were rising across the country, and the risk of violence was escalating.

A UN Women team assessed the earthquake damage in Nurgal, one of the worst affected districts in Kunar province, northeastern Afghanistan.

Online livelihoods switched off

In Afghanistan, waves of directives banning women from most jobs and restricting their movement without a male guardian have systematically pushed them out of public life.

For many women entrepreneurs, the Internet offers a rare space to work, build small businesses, and sell their products – such as nuts, spices, handicrafts, clothes and artworks – to customers within Afghanistan and overseas.

“There is no space for us to work outside our homes,” explained business owner Sama*, from Parwan in eastern Afghanistan. “There’s also no local market where we can display and sell our products.”

With the support of UN Women, Sama built an online shop selling knitted bags, purses and jewelry.

“Through my online shop, I became well known,” she says. “I’m earning money, solving my financial problems, and becoming self-sufficient.”

When the blackout struck, women like Sama lost their only source of income overnight – a warning that for many Afghan women, connectivity is not a luxury, but a lifeline.

From blackout to global action

The Internet blackout in Afghanistan was a stark reminder that the digital world is not neutral. It can be space of empowerment. It can also be a tool of exclusion and isolation.

The stories of Afghan women remind us what is at stake: education, mental health, livelihoods, and hope. When women are silenced online, they are cut off further from opportunity and from the world.

How UN Women is supporting women and girls in Afghanistan

Through its flagship programme, Rebuilding the Women’s Movement, UN Women in Afghanistan partnered with 140 women-led organizations across 24 provinces and supported 743 women staff with salaries and training – amplifying resilience even as public life is restricted.

Read more about our work in Afghanistan.

*Name was changed to protect her identity.

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By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO, Oct 10 2025 (IPS)

Toda Peace Memorial Hall. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The hall itself is symbolic in Japan’s peace movement. It is named after Josei Toda, the second president of the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai, who in 1957 made his historic Declaration Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons before 50,000 youth members. That appeal has become a moral pillar of Soka Gakkai’s global campaign for peace and disarmament.

Reclaiming Women’s Voices

Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

Her documentary, Jara—meaning “wound” in Kazakh—tells the stories of women from Semey, formerly known as Semipalatinsk, the site of 456 Soviet nuclear tests conducted between 1949 and 1989.

Unlike earlier films that focused on physical devastation and disability caused by nuclear testing, Jara explores the unseen and intergenerational impacts: the stigma, the psychological scars, and the inherited fear of bearing children.

“Most films show Semey as ‘the most nuked place on Earth.’ I wanted to show resilience instead of fear—to reclaim our story in our own voice,” she said.

Aigerim Seitenova Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

Seitenova’s personal connection to the issue began with humiliation.

As a university student in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, when she introduced herself as being from Semey, a classmate mockingly asked if she had “a tail.”

“That moment stayed with me,” she recalled. “It made me realise that nuclear harm is not only physical. It lives on in prejudice and silence.”

That experience would later drive her to create a film that breaks that silence.

Patriarchy and Nuclear Power

In Jara, women appear not as passive victims but as active participants in their communities, confronting the legacies of secrecy and discrimination.

“In militarised societies, nuclear weapons are symbols of superiority,” Seitenova said in her speech. “Peace and cooperation are dismissed as weak— as feminine. That’s the mindset we must challenge.”

Her feminist perspective connects nuclear weapons and patriarchy, arguing that both systems thrive on domination and power over others.

From the Steppes to Global Advocacy

Author made a documentary of the 2018 conference which Seitenova participated. Credit:INPS Japan

Born into a third-generation family affected by radiation exposure in Semey, Seitenova said her activism was inspired by “quiet endurance and the absence of open discussion.”

In 2018, she joined the Youth for CTBTO and Group of Eminent Persons (GEM) ‘Youth International Conference’ organised by the Kazakh government. During the five-day programme, young representatives from nuclear-weapon, non-nuclear and nuclear-dependent states travelled along with nuclear disarmament experts overnight by train from Astana to Kurchatov, visiting the former test site. “It was the first time I saw the land that shaped my people’s history,” she said.

Aigerim Seitenova captured in a scene from “Jara”. Credit: Aigerim Seitenova

She cites Togzhan Kassenova’s Atomic Steppe and Ray Acheson’s Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy as works that helped her articulate how nuclear policy and gender inequality are intertwined.

Mr. Hiroshi Nose, director of Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum explaining the impact of Atom Bomb. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri, President of INPS Japan

In October, Seitenova travelled to Japan to participate in the 24th World Congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in Nagasaki, meeting survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Seitenova(Center) was among a youth representative from communities affected by nuclear testings sharing her experiences at the Nuclear Survivors Forum held at UN Church Center, New York. Credit: ICAN / Haruka Sakaguchi

That spirit carried into the Tokyo screening, where diplomats, journalists and peace activists discussed nuclear justice, gender equality and youth participation.

Turning Pain into Power

Through her organisation, the Kazakh Nuclear Frontline Coalition (ASQAQQNFC), Seitenova works to connect nuclear-affected communities with policymakers implementing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

“The fight for nuclear justice is not about the past—it’s about the future,” she said. “It’s about ensuring that no one else has to live with the consequences of nuclear weapons.”

As the applause filled the Toda Peace Memorial Hall, the resonance was unmistakable—linking a hall named for a man who condemned the bomb to the wind-scarred plains of Semey, where the voices of women are at last being heard.

Credit: SGI

This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

INPS Japan

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 2025 (IPS)

Faced with a severe liquidity crisis and a hostile Trump administration, the UN continues to merge some of its multiple agencies, and move them out of New York, relocating to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Perhaps the first two agencies to be merged will be UN Women (created in 2010) and the UN Population Fund (created in 1967), with some staffers moved to Bonn and others to Nairobi.

And the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) may be next in line bound to Nairobi.

The UN is also considering several potential mergers primarily to reduce costs and improve effectiveness, including merging the UN AIDS agency (UNAIDS) into the World Health Organization (WHO), consolidating the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and restructuring the Department of Peace Operations (DPO) and Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA).

“Externally, there has been enthusiastic reception of members of the UN family like UN-Women (but also UNFPA and UNICEF) relocating global functions to Nairobi and Bonn,” according to a UN report.

The new locations may also include Bangkok, Doha, Dubai and Istanbul.

Addressing the 80th UN General Assembly sessions last month, the President of Turkiye Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered Istanbul as a new relocation site describing the Turkish city as “an excellent UN hub”.

The UN’s cash crisis, prompting mergers and relocations, has been triggered by $2.8 billion in unpaid U.S. dues, both for regular and peacekeeping budgets. And, as of last week, only 139 out of 193 countries have paid their dues in full, with 54 countries in arrears.

Asked for an update on the move to Nairobi, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters October 3, the UN complex in Nairobi is growing.

“The last time I was there, there was construction. It’s been expanding for some time. I think a number of agencies are already looking at moving. A lot of it will also depend on the budget, and decisions by Member States”.

Asked about the offer of Istanbul, he said, the relocation of posts from a number of more traditional UN headquarter cities to others is something that is being looked at, something that has already happened.

“Istanbul is already home to a number of regional hubs for various UN organizations. So, it is something we’re continuously evaluating.”

Kul Gautam. a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, told IPS UNICEF has launched its own “Future Focus Initiative” to increase the organization’s agility, efficiency, and effectiveness in response to declining funding.

The initiative includes significant budget cuts at headquarters and regional offices, staff relocation to lower-cost locations, and the consolidation of some regional offices.

As part of this exercise, he said, UNICEF’s core budget at Headquarters and Regional Offices will be cut by 25%, and about 70% of Headquarters staff will be relocated to lower-cost duty stations like Bangkok, Nairobi, and perhaps even Doha, Dubai, and Istanbul that are closer to most UNICEF field offices.

“Such redeployment of staff can help streamline operations and reduce operating costs”.

A major original mission of many specialized UN agencies, funds, and programmes, Gautam pointed out, was to provide specialized technical expertise that was not readily available in developing countries.

“Considering that many developing countries now have highly skilled professionals (many of whom migrate to high-income countries in search of better prospects), UN offices should seriously consider employing more national professionals in developing countries at considerably lower emoluments than very high-cost expatriates from the Global North”.

Decades ago, he recalled, UNICEF pioneered the practice of employing a fairly large number of national professionals in its country offices.

“All UN agencies should now consider emulating UNICEF’s example, and UNICEF itself should expand this practice, while retaining the basic international nature of the organization”, said Gautam, author of ‘Global Citizen from Gulmi: My Journey from the Hills of Nepal to the Halls of United Nations’.

While bureaucracies and vested interests of staff in the Secretariat of various organizations are partly responsible for the proliferation of the mandates and overly complex and convoluted reports, Member States need to restrain their demands and appetite for unduly detailed and unnecessarily frequent reports.

With the advent of AI, there is an opportunity now to consolidate and shorten these reports drastically.

Gautam said: “Even the frequency of Board meetings is excessive. Currently, UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, UN Women, and WFP Boards meet three times each year. Cutting those Board meetings to twice a year would save many resources without compromising on the accountability of the agencies.”

Speaking of mergers, Dr Purnima Mane, former Deputy Executive Director (Programme) and UN Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG) at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS it is not surprising that under the UN 80 restructuring plan, the UN is considering some major measures like merging some of its agencies like UNFPA and UN Women and moving some of their staff out of New York to other countries.

Streamlining might temporarily resolve the current liquidity crisis and the move away from New York would demonstrate moving towards decentralization – both laudable goals. However, in the current scenario these appear like short term steps mainly to cut costs without evidence of how they fit into an altered strategic vision for the UN, she said.

“How these steps are part of a bigger strategic approach to make the UN more effective in what it wishes to achieve is unclear. Cutbacks and mergers can provide short term relief but they also can obviously create problems of their own, such as losing out on the gains made over the years in the areas of work of these agencies and programs, all of which are critical to development.”

This will jeopardize the impact of the work of the programs and endanger the achievement of many critical global goals, said Dr Mane, former President and CEO of Pathfinder International.

In the case of merging UNFPA with UN Women, she pointed out, the argument has been made that merging the mandates of advancing gender equality as a whole, with strengthening reproductive health and rights of women, could in fact benefit women.

In theory this sounds great but the reality of the context and history of women’s issues calls that assumption into question.

In a political context in which Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) issues are deeply contested and even opposed by some Member States, UNFPA’s work on those issues could be greatly diluted through the merger.

Prior commitments made by countries especially to SRHR risk receiving lower priority, in favor of some more politically acceptable though important areas that UN Women focuses on, such as women’s economic empowerment.

Also, a merger does not guarantee that the new merged organization would get anywhere close to the equivalent of what UNFPA and UN Women currently receive in resources, she warned.

The merger could result in deep cuts to resources assigned to gender issues overall, thereby depriving countries of the needed support on these issues, at a cost that ignores the laudable reasons why these agencies and programs were created as separate entities.

This is definitely a wake-up call to the two agencies to develop more strategic and effective ways to streamline and coordinate their work in ways that do not slow the progress made on issues that are central to gender equality and women, while also working on decentralizing their programs but the planned solution of merger is likely to be severely damaging for women and their status.

Speaking in an unofficial and personal capacity, Shihana Mohamed, a founding member and Coordinator of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI), told IPS: UN Women was established to be a force multiplier—mainstreaming women’s rights across peace building, development, and human rights.

Yet today, she pointed out, it faces chronic underfunding, limited political influence, and a shrinking mandate.

“As a gender equality advocate, I fear that the potential merger of UN Women with UNFPA under the UN80 reform agenda could further dilute the UN Women’s distinct mandate”.

“If the merger is rushed or imposed from the top, decades of institutional knowledge, technical expertise, and trusted partnerships— built separately by UN Women and UNFPA—could be lost.”

It also risks sidelining UN Women’s policy leadership, weakening its accountability role, and shifting resources from structural change to service delivery. In short, it could turn a transformative agenda into a technocratic one, she argued.

Any restructuring must preserve UN Women’s distinct mandate. Member States must increase core funding for UN Women and support its integration across all UN agencies. Political backing must match rhetorical support, she said.

“The creation of UN Women was the culmination of years of negotiations among Member States and advocacy by the global women’s movement. Thus, the UN80 Task Force and other reform bodies must engage openly with all stakeholders”.

“ I also emphasize the need for meaningful consultation with feminist movements before making structural changes as they are the watchdogs and visionaries of global gender justice.

Decisions affecting UN Women’s future must be transparent, inclusive, and grounded in human rights—not just cost-efficiency,” said Mohamed, a US Public Voices Fellow with the OPED Project and Equality Now on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls.

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More women must have a role in shaping peace agreements, security reforms and post-conflict recovery plans, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council October 6. Credit: UN News

By Sima Bahous
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 2025 (IPS)

We meet on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325—a milestone born of the multilateral system’s conviction that peace is more robust, security more enduring, when women are at the table.

Yet the record of the last 25 years is mixed: bold, admirable commitments have been followed too often by weak implementation and chronic under-investment. Today, 676 million women and girls live within reach of deadly conflict, the highest [number] since the 1990s.

It is lamentable, then, that we see today rising military spending and renewed pushback against gender equality and multilateralism. These threaten the very foundations of global peace and security.

This anniversary must be more than a commemoration. Women and girls who live amidst conflict deserve more than commemoration. It must instead be a moment to refocus, recommit, and ensure that the next 25 years deliver much more than the last.

A belief in the core principles of resolution 1325 is shared by women and men everywhere. Whether through our work at country level, including in conflicts, or in the recent Member State commitments for the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, we know that our women, peace and security agenda, our conviction for equality, enjoys the support of an overwhelming majority of women and men, and also of Member States.

Even in Afghanistan, UN Women’s ongoing monitoring shows that 92 per cent of Afghans, men and women both, think that girls must be able to attend secondary education. It is also striking that a majority of Afghan women say they remain hopeful that they will one day achieve their aspirations.

This, despite everything they endure under Taliban oppression. Their hope is not an idle wish, and it is more than a coping mechanism. It is a political statement. A conviction. An inspiration.

As we meet to discuss the women, peace and security agenda, the painful situation in the Middle East, especially for women and girls, remains on our minds and in our hearts. Two years into the devastating Gaza war, amid the killing, the pain and the loss, a glimmer of hope emerges.

I join the Secretary-General in welcoming the positive responses to President Donald Trump’s proposal to end the Gaza war, to implement an immediate and lasting ceasefire to secure the unconditional release of all hostages, and to ensure unhindered humanitarian access.

We hope that this will lead to a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis alike, where all women and girls live with dignity, security, and opportunity.

The trends documented in the Secretary-General’s report should alarm us. It is understandable that some might conclude that the rise and normalization of misogyny currently poisoning our politics and fuelling conflict is unstoppable. It is not. Those who oppose equality do not own the future, we do.

The reality is that globally, suffering and displacement will likely rise in the face of seemingly intractable conflicts and growing instability. And it is a painful fact that we must be prepared for the situation to become worse before it becomes better for women and girls.

This will continue to be exacerbated by short-sighted funding cuts that already undermine education opportunities for Afghan girls; curtail life-saving medical attention for tens of thousands of survivors of rape and sexual violence in Sudan, Haiti and beyond; shutter health clinics across conflict zones; limit access to food for malnourished and starving mothers and their children in Gaza, Mali, Somalia and elsewhere; and fundamentally will erode the chance for peace.

Yet despite the horrors of wars and conflicts, women continue to build peace.

• Women are reducing community violence in Abyei and the Central African Republic, and mobilizing for peace in Yemen, in Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• In Haiti, women have managed to achieve near parity in the new provisional electoral council and increased the quota for women in the draft constitution.

• In Chad, women’s representation in the National Assembly has doubled.

• In Syria, the interim Constitution ratified this March mandates the Government to guarantee the social, economic, and political rights of women, and protect them from all forms of oppression, injustice, and violence.

• In Ukraine, women have achieved the codification into law of gender-responsive budgeting, including across national relief efforts.

Whether mediating, brokering access to services, driving reconstruction, and more, women’s leadership is the face of resilience—a force for peace.

The Secretary-General has just spoken to UN Women’s recent survey findings, which highlight how current financing trends are endangering the viability and safety of women-led organizations in conflict-affected countries.

We believe there is no alternative but to change course and to invest significantly in women’s organizations on the frontlines of conflict.

The last 25 years have seen an emphasis on investing in transnational security and international legal institutions. This has not been matched by attention to investing in national capacities and social movements.

And while attention to the women, peace and security agenda has been focused in global capitals and in major cities of conflict-affected countries, it must also become localized and reach the remote areas that are worst affected and where it makes the biggest difference. This is true for information, funding, policy implementation, services, and more.

Recent years have seen a much-needed increased level of attention to conflict-related sexual violence than ever before. We have taken huge strides in ending the silence, chipping away at the impunity that emboldens and enables perpetrators.

These efforts must be redoubled, giving greater attention to reproductive violence, gender-based persecution in accountability initiatives, and a more comprehensive understanding of atrocities disproportionately affecting women and girls in conflict.

In the next 25 years of the critical women, peace and security agenda, it is crucial that we see funding earmarked, robust quotas implemented, clear instructions and mandates, and accountability measures in place that make failures visible and have consequences.

So, allow me to leave you with five calls to action that need full attention in the coming years:

• First: Affirmative action to ensure women take their rightful place at the peace-making table and consistent support to them as peacekeepers, peacebuilders, and human rights defenders. This must become a hardwired feature of the way we conduct the business of peace.

• Second: Measure the impact of this agenda by the number of women that participate directly in peace and security processes, and by the relief women receive in the form of justice, reparations, services, or asylum.

• Third: End violence against women and girls, address emerging forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and challenge harmful narratives both online and offline.

• Fourth: End impunity for atrocities and crimes against women and girls, respect and uphold international law, silence the guns, and ensure peace is always in the ascendency.

• Fifth: Embed the women, peace and security agenda ever-deeper in the hearts and minds of ordinary people, particularly young people, both boys and girls. It is they who will determine the future of our ambitions, ambitions that must ultimately become theirs too.

Above all, the coming few years should see Security Council resolution 1325 implemented fully, across all contexts.

When women lead, peace follows. We made a promise to them 25 years ago. It is past time to deliver.

This article is based on remarks by UN Under-Secretary General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the Security Council meeting on “Women and peace and security” on 6 October 2025.

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Excerpt:

Participants at the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum meeting held in Huairou, China, as part of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, on 4-15 september 1995. Credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2025 (IPS)

Thirty years since the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the resolve that defined and united the world toward a global agenda for gender equality make it just as relevant in 2025.

The Beijing Conference represents a turning point for the global movement in gender equality. It is marked by the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which is still held up as a landmark document in presenting a comprehensive blueprint to achieve gender equality.

The Beijing Conference was just “one stop in a long and continuing journey of feminist advocacy,” said Sia Nowrojee, a Kenyan women’s rights advocate with more than thirty years’ experience.

“Even though it’s thirty years later, it’s absolutely relevant. It was the culmination of twenty years of advocacy and gender equality.” Nowrojee is the UN Foundation’s Associate Vice President of their Girls and Women Strategy division.

The Beijing Conference was the first time that the international community integrated gender equality into the global development and rights agenda. It was recognition that securing the rights and dignities for all women and girls would be integral to achieving widespread development. This was key for the countries that had emerged in the post-colonial era.

Sia Nowrojee, UN Foundation’s Associate Vice President of Girls and Women Strategy. Credit: UN Foundation

The leadership of advocates from the Global South was instrumental to the Beijing PoA. Representatives from Africa, Asia, and Latin America pushed for the measures that make the framework as inclusive as it is. Nowrojee gave the example of girls’ rights being recognized thanks to the efforts of African feminists in the lead-up to Beijing.

Hibaaq Osman, a Somali human rights activist and founder of El-Karama, considers that the Global South activists had been uniquely prepared to participate as they had lived through their countries’ great political upheavals against colonialism and racism.

Osman attended Beijing 1995 as part of the Center of Strategic Initiatives of Women, a civil society network.

Hibaaq Osman, a Somali human rights activist and founder of El-Karama. Credit: UN Foundation

“For me, as a young woman, I was shocked by the things that I heard. I was raised to believe that everything was a privacy. But to hear a woman speaking for herself and sharing things that I never thought you could share with others, including violence against women… It absolutely opened my eyes and made me see, ‘Oh my god, I can actually share things with other women,’” Osman told IPS.

For Osman, the Beijing conference represented the possibilities of what could be achieved through a shared agenda and a shared sense of hope. The unique energy from that conference drove her advocacy work through groups like the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) and then El-Karama, which is working to end violence against women in the Arab region and South Sudan.

General view of the opening session of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant

Beijing 1995 also provided the expectation of accountability from governments and policy makers if they did not implement the PoA. “That had never happened before. There was a mechanism for the first time…,” said Osman. “You can hold governments and policymakers accountable. But you also have the connection with grassroots. That it was no longer the individual woman that could claim that she was the leader, but having accountability to your own people, I think that whole thing was fantastic.”

“I think the legacy of Beijing 1995 honestly, it gave us a legacy of getting out of our corners and just wide open to the rest of the women. And I think that vision, that framework is still working.”

Delegates working late into the night to draft the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Credit: UNDP/Milton Grant

The success of the Women’s Conferences also demonstrated the UN’s role as a space to build up the gender equality movement, Nowrojee remarked. The UN has also served as a platform for emerging countries to raise their issues to the international community and to shape global agendas on their terms.

Prior to Beijing, the UN World Conference on Women had previously been held in Nairobi (1985), Copenhagen (1980) and Mexico City (1975). These were also key forums for people from all parts of the world to build relationships and for there to be a “cross-pollination of ideas and experiences”, laying down the groundwork for what was later achieved in Beijing.

Nowrojee was 18 years old when she attended the Nairobi 1985 Conference as part of a school/youth delegation. The experience was formative in listening to women’s activists from the region impart their wisdom and insights.

“To see the world’s women come to my home and talk about the fact that we mattered was life-changing for me,” Nowrojee said. “I made friends who I still work with and love and see today. And I think there is that sort of personal part, which is both personally sustaining, but it’s a critical part of feminist movement building.”

Each conference built up momentum that saw no sign of slowing down. Osman and Nowrojee explained that as gains were being made at local, national and global levels, this encouraged those in the movement to act with urgency and go further. This provided them the spaces to learn how to refine the messages for local contexts.

Delegates at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995. Credit: UNDPI /UN Women

The gains towards gender equality should be noted: the codification of women’s rights around the world, their increased participation in politics and in peace negotiations. Evidence has shown that investing in women’s participation in society through health, education and employment leads to economic growth and prosperity. More women in the workforce mean greater economic gains and stability. Increased social protections for women lead to more stability in communities.

And yet, there was backlash to the momentum. Recent years have seen the rise of anti-rights and anti-gender movements gain greater traction, combined with increasing attempts to strip women of their rights. UN Women has warned that one in four countries are reporting a backlash to women’s rights.

Nowrojee remarked that the autocratic leaders that champion these movements target women’s rights because it threatens their own agenda. “If you are silencing half the human family, and you are hampering their ability to make decisions about their bodies, to participate in political process… these are very, very effective ways of undermining democracy, development, peace and the achievement of all the goals and values that we hold dear.”

“They understand that if you bring women down, you are bringing society down, because women are the core of society,” Osman added.

The modern movements are also well-funded and well-organized. But there is an irony to it in that they use the same tactics that feminist movements have been using for decades by organizing at the grassroots level before moving their influence up to the national level and beyond. But this should not be where activists fall to despair. Instead they should understand, Osman and Nowrojee remarked, that women in this space already know what actions need to be taken to regain lost momentum.

“I’m sure that Sia and I and many, many others who were part of that are also thinking about today and what’s happening, and we know the space for civil society is shrinking,” Osman said. “The space for democracy, human rights, justice, reproductive rights, for all of that, there is absolutely a rollback, But it’s not going to delay us. We are just going to be more sophisticated and ask ourselves “Where are the blocks, how do we build… diverse constituencies?”… So it is hard, but we are not slowing down whatsoever.”

Today, it may seem the pursuit of gender equality is an ongoing struggle that faces the threat of autocratic movements that sow distrust and division. For the people who championed the women’s rights movement and can recall a time before the Beijing PoA, they are all too aware of what is at stake. The leaders in modern movements today need to look back to the past to take lessons, and to take courage.

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General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock of Germany addresses the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the thirtieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women. Only the fifth woman to preside over the UN General Assembly in its 80-year history, she praised the courage of those “who fought for every phrase, every word in the Beijing Declaration,” marking the 30th Anniversary of the pivotal international conference on women’s empowerment. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Shihana Mohamed
NEW YORK, Sep 29 2025 (IPS)

In her opening statement, Annalena Baerbock (Germany), President of the 80th UN General Assembly, only the fifth female to hold this position over 80 years, stated, “Our future as an institution will also be shaped by the selection of the next Secretary-General. And here we must pause and reflect. In nearly eighty years, this Organization has never chosen a woman for that role. One might wonder how out of four billion potential candidates, there could not be found a single one. … Like 80 years ago, we are standing at a crossroads.”

As the United Nations approaches its next appointment of a Secretary-General in 2026, the world is rallying behind a long-overdue milestone: the possibility of a woman leading the UN for the first time in its 80-year history. The momentum is undeniable.

Civil society campaigns like “1 for 8 Billion” are gaining traction, and 92 Member States have expressed strong support for a woman Secretary-General, with 28 of them formally called for female candidates. This is more than a symbolic gesture—it is a chance to reshape global leadership.

This moment is not just politically significant — it is foundational. The UN Charter, adopted in 1945, enshrines gender equality at its core, pledging “faith in fundamental human rights… and the equal rights of men and women.” That promise must now be fulfilled not only in principle but in practice.

But as the spotlight intensifies on the quest for a female Secretary-General, another critical issue risks fading into the shadows: the dilution of the UN Women mandate. This paradox must be addressed head-on. Because, while breaking the glass ceiling at the top is vital, it means little if the institution responsible for advancing women’s rights across the globe is quietly losing its power.

Empowering Women globally: UN Women’s Unique Mandate

The creation of UN Women was the culmination of years of negotiations among Member States and advocacy by the global women’s movement. In July 2010, the UN General Assembly unanimously voted to establish a new, dynamic UN Entity – UN Women – to strengthen, accelerate, and elevate the UN’s efforts in promoting women’s empowerment and gender equality. Then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the decision, calling it “a truly watershed day”.

UN Women was formed by consolidating four UN entities dedicated to gender equality: the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues (OSAGI), and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW).

UN Women was designed to be a force multiplier—mainstreaming women’s rights across peace building, development, and human rights.

Over 15 years, UN Women has brought unmatched expertise and coordination to the global stage—supporting inclusive policies, empowering grassroots movements, and embedding gender equality across UN initiatives. From ending gender-based violence to advancing women’s leadership, it has become a driving force for transformative change.

Yet today, it faces chronic underfunding, limited political influence, and a shrinking mandate. In many cases, it is treated as a symbolic entity rather than a strategic one.

Merging at a Cost: Diluting UN Women’s Mandate

Now, a new proposal within the broader UN80 reform agenda threatens to further dilute the impact of UN Women: the potential merger of UN Women with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

While both agencies work on overlapping issues, particularly around reproductive health and women’s rights, their mandates are distinct. UN Women focuses on systemic change, policy advocacy, and institutional reform towards advancing the status of women and girls across the world. UNFPA, by contrast, centers on sexual and reproductive health and population dynamics.

A merger could offer some operational benefits such as streamlined programming, reduced administrative overhead, and stronger coordination in areas like gender-based violence. It might even amplify advocacy efforts where reproductive health and women’s rights intersect. But these gains come with serious risks and irreversible consequences.

This merger proposal has raised concerns among civil society groups and gender equality advocates like me, who fear that merging UN Women with a more service-oriented agency like UNFPA could dilute its policy leadership and weaken its systemic mandate.

If the merger is rushed or imposed from the top, decades of institutional knowledge, technical expertise, and trusted partnerships— built separately by UN Women and UNFPA—could be lost. It risks sidelining UN Women’s policy leadership, weakening its accountability role, and shifting resources from structural change to service delivery. In short, it could turn a transformative agenda into a technocratic one.

Consolidating mandates could increase political vulnerability, leaving contentious issues like abortion and comprehensive sexuality education more exposed to donor-driven political interference and budget cuts.

Women-led organizations, already under strain from funding challenges, could face further instability. Additionally, while aimed at improving efficiency, the merger risks increasing bureaucracy and coordination costs.

This is not just an internal UN issue — it is a global one. Women’s rights are foundational to solving the world’s most pressing challenges, from climate change to conflict resolution.

Championing a female Secretary-General while weakening UN Women sends a dangerous message: that representation at the top is enough, even when institutions lack the power to drive real change.

Beyond Rhetoric: Toward Real Change

At the opening of the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2025, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the urgency of the moment, warning: “Women’s rights are under siege. The poison of patriarchy is back—and it is back with a vengeance.

Slamming the brakes on action; tearing-up progress; and mutating into new and dangerous forms. But there is an antidote. That antidote is action. Now is the time for those of us who care about equality for women and girls to stand up and to speak out.”

This call to action should not be ignored. The antidote is not only symbolic leadership—it is institutional strength. To ensure that the UN’s commitment to women’s rights is not reduced to symbolism, the following steps are essential:

Safeguard UN Women’s Autonomy

Any restructuring must preserve UN Women’s distinct mandate. Mergers that dilute its policy leadership or reduce its visibility must be rejected. Women’s empowerment is not a subset of health—it is a global priority.

Strengthen Funding and Influence: Member States must increase core funding for UN Women and support its integration across all UN agencies. Political backing must match rhetorical support.

Institutionalize Feminist Leadership: The next Secretary-General—especially if she is a woman, as we strongly hope—must champion feminist principles in practice. That means elevating UN Women, embedding gender analysis across UN operations, securing its resources, and holding the system accountable for tangible results.

Mobilize Civil Society: Feminist movements and grassroots organizations must remain vigilant to ensure that women’s empowerment is not reduced to optics or absorbed into narrower agendas. They are the watchdogs and visionaries of global gender justice. Their voices must shape reform—not be sidelined by it.

Demand Transparency in Reform: The UN80 Task Force and other reform bodies must engage openly with stakeholders. Decisions affecting UN Women’s future must be transparent, inclusive, and grounded in human rights—not just cost-efficiency.

The UN was founded on the promise of dignity and equality for all. That promise cannot be fulfilled by elevating one woman while sidelining the institution meant to empower millions.

The appointment of a female Secretary-General would be historic — but it must be matched by a commitment to strengthen UN Women. Its mandate must be protected, not merged, or diluted.

UN Women must lead. It must set the agenda, hold agencies accountable, and speak with authority and conviction for women and girls worldwide. The UN has a choice: treat women’s empowerment as transformative—or reduce it to a footnote.

Headlines make history visible. Institutions make it real. Now is the time to act. UN Women must be empowered.

Shihana Mohamed, a Sri Lankan national, is a founding member and Coordinator of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) and a US Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project and Equality Now on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls. She is a dedicated human rights activist and a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women.

The author expresses her views in this article in an entirely unofficial, private, and personal capacity. These views do not reflect those of any organization.

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The opening session of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, 4 September 1995. UN Photo/Milton Grant. The UN marks 30 years since its members adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

By S. Mona Sinha
NEW YORK, Sep 18 2025 (IPS)

On Monday, three decades on from the historic Fourth World Conference on Women, the General Assembly meets to discuss recommitting to, resourcing, and accelerating the implementation of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action – an historic agreement which mapped the path to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.

This is a critical moment because, despite the considerable progress that’s been made, it is a sobering fact that not a single country has yet fully delivered against those aims. And with reactionary attitudes increasingly to the fore, many of these hard-won gains are, alarmingly, under threat of reversal.

Even where the heart is willing, the slow pace or absence of change is more often than not put down to budgetary or political barriers. Gender equality is important, just not important enough. We have other problems to fix. We’ll get back to it.

But this is incredibly short-sighted.

While achieving gender equality is first and foremost a matter of human rights, it is also one of the surest ways to help address those other problems, leading to more prosperous economies, more resilient communities, and more sustainable, peaceful societies.

This is not just a matter of opinion. The evidence is clear.

Closing gender gaps in education, employment and pay would unleash an unprecedented wave of productivity. In 2015, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) estimated that equal participation of women in the workforce could add up to $12 trillion to global GDP within 10 years.

That’s more than the economies of Japan, Germany and the UK combined and would have already been achieved if we had acted on it in 2015.

The logic is simple: excluding half of the population from opportunities to explore and achieve their full potential is an extraordinary waste. When women are able to contribute equally, innovation flourishes, productivity rises and household incomes grow. Far from being a drag on resources, equality is a growth multiplier.

Moreover, women’s earnings are more likely to be invested in children’s health, nutrition, and education, breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty. And in agriculture, where women make up nearly half the global workforce, the FAO estimates equal access to resources could boost crop yields by up to 30% and reduce the number of hungry people by more than 100 million.

Perhaps for these reasons, research has shown that the treatment of women is one of the strongest predictors of whether a country is peaceful. Where women’s rights are respected, societies are more stable, less prone to conflict, and more open to cooperation.

Women’s participation in peace processes matters too. Agreements brokered with women at the table are more durable, more inclusive, and more likely to succeed. We have the proof of that as well.

And then there’s the environment. Women and girls, especially in developing countries, are disproportionately affected by climate change. But it’s also true that when included in decision-making, they bring difference-making knowledge and perspectives to the table.

Indeed, a 2019 study in Global Environmental Change showed that countries with more women in parliament adopt more ambitious climate policies and have lower carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, women-led community programmes in forestry and water management have consistently delivered stronger conservation outcomes. In other words, tackling the climate crisis is not only about technology and finance – it’s also about representation.

Taken together, it’s clear that equality drives prosperity, resilience, peace and sustainability. To deny women equal rights and opportunities is not simply unjust, it’s an act of societal self-sabotage.

At Equality Now, we lead the way in driving the legal and systemic change needed to realise this vision of a just and better world. Since our inception in 1992 we have worked with governments, legal bodies, civil society and other partners to help reform 130 discriminatory laws, improving the lives of millions of women and girls, their communities and nations, both now and for generations to come.

We were in Beijing in 1995, and we’ll be in New York this week – where to all in attendance our message is clear:

The world cannot afford to wait. Everyone needs equality now.

S. Mona Sinha is Global Executive Director, Equality Now

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Indigenous People’s Celebration in Canada. Photo courtesy of Chrystal Tabobandung

By Randa El Ozeir
TORONTO, Sep 2 2025 (IPS)

If European colonialism had never happened in Canada, matriarchy would still have been strong in Indigenous culture. Matriarchy was the backbone of society’s structure and line of dominance in Turtle Island (North America) before the arrival of Westerners.

In practice, Indigenous women in Canada have been victims of violence and discrimination. In theory, they were supposed, along with children, to enjoy full protection, as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states in article 22.

“Traditional knowledge would be whole and complete. Our languages, ceremonies, governance systems, planet health, communities, cosmologies, land practices, water preservation, and harvesting practices would be alive and well,” says Anishinaabe Ancestral Knowledge Keeper Kim Wheatley, “Head/Leader of the Fireflower,” the Spirit name she carries.

The female role and influence in traditional Native American culture were powerful and pivotal. Wheatley cites how women’s main duty, “like all community members, was to live in harmony with creation, a life of committed purpose and passion based on the gifts they arrived with from the spirit world. Women were hunters, foragers, medicine folks, healers, educators, leaders, artists, fishers, ceremonialists, singers, dancers, artists, and governance holders—really the societal glue on how to provide for the greater good. They were the ones who made the big long-term decisions for the communities they were responsible for.”

Anishinaabe Ancestral Knowledge Keeper Kim Wheatley.

The story of Indigenous women in Canada is considerably incompatible with what Disney World tried to twist and distort in its popular animation “Pocahontas.” Chrystal Tabobandung, Founder of RAISE Indigenous cultural awareness and competence training with Ojibwe roots, sees the “hatred of white women towards us, as if we were less. We have been kicked out of our homes. We are suffering today and being sexualized by men and social media. Historically, white women envied us because of the roles we held in our communities and our traditional ways.”

This is where the impact of colonialism has come in, right from earlier contact, and changed over time. Women in Europe were not to be seen, not to be heard. They were in the background, and they were very resentful at the fact that, here, Indigenous women had a voice, a seat at the table to make decisions regarding safety, child rearing, politics, and even where to camp.”

Socio-Economic Inequality

The effect of the forced Western social and business model has shattered too many Indigenous communities, and the shift to a Western male-dominant lifestyle has altered the whole picture.

Wheatley believes that over the last 150 years, “The foundation of species became a risk. The destruction of lands and waters through endless resource extraction, racism, misogyny, the vulgarity of political decision-making on women’s bodies, the ever-rising violence against women and girls, and the list goes on and on. We see a dramatic disparity in the socio-economic realities. Our People have vast, complex political systems, governance structures, balanced leadership models, extraordinary, vibrant trade practices, endless creativity, and intimate relationships to lands and waters. Deep moral teachings that contribute to the greater good based on long-standing visioning practices.”

While women can and do run for leadership roles, the colonial system does not support traditional governance and practices. The Indian Act is still law in Canada and is one of the recognized leading racist legal documents in the world. This Act oversees how and what a First Nation community can do within reserve confines and what happens when you leave.”

Chrystal Tabobandung, Founder of RAISE Indigenous cultural awareness.

The differences among Indigenous women vary according to their distinct nations. In Canada, there are over 630 recognized First Nations communities.

“Our nations’ women do things differently based on nation-to-nation teachings that are tied to tradition and culture as opposed to roles,” explains Tabobandung. “There are so many divergent oppressive systems that disconnect them.

They do not necessarily work together, but regarding huge social issues, like murdered and missing Indigenous women and sex trafficking, they do come together. They are active in marches and rallies. They stand up against injustices and reconnect with their tradition and their culture. The more voices that are coming out, the more people feel courageous, strong, and able to come forth with their personal experiences.”

How does lack of access to safe drinking water affect Indigenous women? According to Wheatley, “The water crisis in First Nations communities is under-recognized as a continuous assault on a basic human right. Women who live off-reserve have greater opportunities for employment, housing, and other socio-economic possibilities that simply are not available on many reserves for a wide variety of reasons. Educational facilities are far more accessible, along with social services that are integral to supporting families.”

“The proximity of travel to/from work, social gatherings, support spaces, cultural activities, educational options, and greater social interactions are much more accessible in urban areas,” continues Wheatley. “This contributes to a greater sense of well-being. In small towns, racism may not support greater opportunities, but in cities with larger populations, the odds increase in a woman’s favor.”

Reconciliation and Preserving People’s Culture

In her opinion, Wheatley sees that the Truth and Reconciliation Report was a gift to Canadians, challenging their comfort in historic amnesia and continued ignorance of cultural genocide committed by the highest leadership in this country.

“Anytime we have a voice from ‘our people’ to say how we need to look at restitution and restoration of our sovereignty, it is the right path. We do not need to be told how to heal… We need to tell the country how to support our healing. This is what the report does beautifully. It is as comprehensive as the country can digest at this time and yet… few of the ‘calls to action’ have been addressed meaningfully to date.”

Ten years have passed, yet not much has changed, Wheatley adds.

“This country has continuously operated under the fallacy of the Doctrine of Discovery and theft of land that was never theirs to take.”

The Western Eurocentric perspective has been imposed even on terminology and on what an Indigenous person uses. Tabobandung says, “Only in the past couple of generations have we empowered our children to have voices and ask questions. I grew up in a smaller town where colonialism impacted us, but we were still able to carry down our teachings and our stories. People who have been removed from their culture or have become disconnected in any way wouldn’t know these teachings.”

In British Columbia, Indigenous people are knowledgeable about their culture.

“They really project the importance of their Indigenous women,” says Wheatley. “If there is any movement for any Indigenous or Aboriginal rights to change in the court system, it will take place in precedence in British Columbia and will set that precedent for all other nations across Canada.”

Is There a Way Out?

Wheatley believes the solution between the government and Indigenous people has not been prioritized. “

Hence, Third World conditions exist as a norm in many [Indigenous] communities. To reconcile the crimes of the past in Canada, the perpetrators need to take responsibility, but that continues to be a threat to colonial intrusion and imposition on lands that are rightfully ours!”

Everyone takes Reconciliation differently.

Tabobandung heard different voices; some people are more extreme than others. On the ground, the fait accompli is that Indigenous people, Westerners, and other immigrants are practically sharing their lives on Turtle Island.

Tabobandung finds herself in the middle

“You have this Western business, social, and political model, and your model. How would you balance this? Many First Nations people have had this difficulty, especially those who come from Northern rural, remote communities. You have to know who you are and have deep roots. It is really hard to make that transition, especially in the Western Eurocentric system, where they want to get rid of us; they want to integrate us into the Westernized society so that we don’t exist anymore. Some get to a point where they find peace and balance.”

“I am Anishinaabe. I am Ojibwe. I refuse to acknowledge myself as Indigenous, First Nation, or Aboriginal,” says Tabobandung. “Our people are older than the terminologies the federal government imposed upon us. I walk softly and gently upon the earth. Culture has saved me, knowing that I am First Peoples to this land, in this territory, and knowing that a system is trying to annihilate my people, and knowing that I am still here thriving and surviving.”

This is what motivates her.

“It is why I walk with my head held high. It is why I educate myself as much as I can on anything. I paint indigenous paintings and do indigenous art to pass that knowledge down.”

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Credit: Corte IDH/Twitter

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 28 2025 (IPS)

On 7 August, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights delivered a groundbreaking decision that could transform women’s lives across the Americas. For the first time in international law, an international tribunal recognised care as an autonomous human right. Advisory Opinion 31/25, issued in response to a request from Argentina, elevates care – long invisible and relegated to the private sphere – to the level of a universal enforceable entitlement.

The court’s decision emerged from a highly participatory process that included extensive written submissions from civil society, academics, governments and international organisations, plus public hearings held in Costa Rica in March 2024. The ruling validates what feminist activists have argued for decades: care work is labour with immense social and economic value that deserves recognition and protection.

Three dimensions of care

The statistics that informed this ruling tell a stark story. In Latin America, women perform between 69 and 86 per cent of all unpaid domestic and care work, hampering their careers, education and personal development. The court recognised this imbalance as a source of structural gender inequality that needs urgent state action.

The decision defines care broadly, covering all tasks necessary for the reproduction and sustenance of life, from providing food and healthcare to offering emotional support. It establishes three interdependent dimensions: the right to provide care, the right to receive care and the right to self-care.

The court interpreted the American Convention on Human Rights as encompassing the right to care, making clear states must respect, protect and guarantee this right through laws, public policies and resources. It outlined measures states should take, including mandatory paid paternity leave equal to maternity leave, workplace flexibility for carers, recognition of care work as labour deserving social protection and comprehensive public care systems.

Feminist advocacy vindicated

The court’s decision reflects the profound influence of feminist scholarship. For decades, feminist activists have insisted that care work, overwhelmingly performed by women, is invisible and undervalued despite being central to sustaining life and economies. The court’s recognition validates these arguments, affirming that care work isn’t a natural extension of women’s roles confined in the private sphere, but labour with immense social and economic value.

The court’s intersectional approach represents another crucial victory for feminist movements. The advisory opinion acknowledged that care burdens aren’t evenly distributed among women: Indigenous, Afro-descendant, migrant and low-income women face disproportionate responsibilities and multiple layers of discrimination. This recognition aligns with feminist movements’ emphasis on the ways gender, race, class and migration status intersect to shape inequality.

Significantly, the court explicitly connected self-care with access to sexual and reproductive health services, recognising that genuine wellbeing requires the ability to make free and informed decisions about pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood and bodily autonomy. It stressed that all people – including women, transgender people and non-binary people who can become pregnant – should be free from imposed mandates of motherhood or care.

Civil society’s crucial role

This victory belongs to civil society. Feminist and human rights organisations across Latin America campaigned to bring the issue before the court and provided crucial expertise. Groups such as ELA-Equipo Latinoamericano de Justicia y Género, Dejusticia, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Women in Informal Employment-Globalizing and Organizing submitted arguments and evidence that shaped the court’s reasoning.

Organisations documented the realities of women caring for incarcerated relatives, migrant women working care jobs in precarious conditions and communities lacking basic services such as water and sanitation that make unpaid care work even more burdensome. This helped ensure the court’s opinion reflected social realities rather than abstract principles.

The opinion’s transformative potential extends beyond gender equality. By recognising care as a universal human need, it positions it as a cornerstone of sustainable development. Investments in care infrastructure create jobs, reduce inequality and support women’s workplace participation while ensuring that children, older people and people with disabilities can live with dignity and autonomy.

The road to implementation

While advisory opinions aren’t binding, they carry considerable legal and political weight, setting regional standards that influence constitutional reforms, strategic litigation and policy development. This decision provides a blueprint for societies where care isn’t an invisible burden but a shared and supported responsibility.

However, feminist organisations have noted a crucial limitation: the court’s decision not to designate the state as the primary guarantor of care rights creates an ambiguity that risks allowing governments to offload duties onto families, perpetuating the inequalities the decision aims to address.

Civil society faces the crucial task of ensuring that implementation prioritises state responsibility. The test lies in transforming legal recognition into laws, policies and practices that reach those most in need. The struggle now shifts from the courtroom to the political arena. Feminist movements are already preparing strategic cases and launching campaigns to pressure governments to pass laws, allocate budgets and build required infrastructure.

States must pass laws recognising the right to care, design universal care systems, integrate time-use surveys into national accounts and build robust care infrastructure. Employers must adapt workplaces to recognise caregiving responsibilities. Civil society and governments must challenge gender stereotypes and engage men and boys in care work.

The Inter-American Court has shown what’s possible: societies where care is valued, supported and shared. For the millions of women across the Americas who have carried this burden in silence, the work of turning this historic recognition into lived reality begins now.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

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CIVICUS speaks about the Iranian regime’s execution of political prisoners with Safora Sadidi, a human rights activist with the Women’s Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Safora lost her father and six family members to the theocratic regime, and has dedicated over two decades to the Iranian Resistance’s international efforts.

Safora Sadidi

How do the recent executions connect to your experience and what do they reveal about the regime’s strategy?

The killings of Ehsani and Hassani are a painful echo of my personal tragedy. I lost seven members of my family in the struggle against this religious dictatorship, including my father. Like Behrouz and Mehdi, he was a member of the PMOI/MEK and was executed in 1988 along with 30,000 other political prisoners whose only ‘crime’ was demanding freedom and justice. I was six years old and losing my father was the heaviest burden of my childhood. It’s a grief that never leaves you, and it resurfaces with every announcement of another life taken.

Last week, another five political prisoners were forcibly transferred to the site where Behrouz and Mehdi were executed. They are next in line, and at imminent risk.

As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran has stated, the killing spree continues because the architects of the 1988 massacre never faced consequences. Many of them now hold senior positions in the government, and impunity fuels their brutality.

Executions are a political weapon that exposes the regime’s strategy for survival: terror. Since its first day in power, it has ruled through systematic repression, executing dissidents at home and exporting terrorism abroad. To date, it has executed over 120,000 people.

The recent surge in executions shouldn’t be mistaken for strength: it’s a desperate act of a collapsing dictatorship. History shows mass killings are the final resort of failing regimes, and that’s exactly what we are seeing in Iran today. When state media praises the 1988 massacre as a ‘successful historical experience’ to be repeated, it exposes its only remaining tool to cling to power. The regime intensifies repression because it senses its end is near.

The fact that prisoners like Ehsani and Hassani were executed despite European Parliament resolutions and widespread international condemnation is a sign of a profound internal crisis. It also reveals that the regime’s primary war is not against any foreign power, but against the Iranian people, particularly women and young people, who it fears most. These killings are meant to frighten us into submission. But they are backfiring: with every drop of blood spilled, people’s resolve to overthrow this regime becomes a hundred times stronger.

What challenges do women human rights defenders face?

In Iran’s medieval dictatorship, gender apartheid is the law, with stoning and public executions of women as official policy. As a woman, I face double repression: from the regime’s institutionalised misogyny and from its political narrative, which seeks to erase women’s role in the opposition.

Those who dare to resist face severe brutality. Pregnant women and teenage girls as young as 13 have been executed, and mothers have been raped and tortured in cages designed to break their will. Yet it is their resilience that inspires generations. Take Maryam Akbari Monfared, a mother of three who has spent almost 16 years behind bars without a break, simply for demanding justice for siblings executed in the 1988 massacre. The regime has said she won’t be released unless she renounces her call for accountability, but she refuses to do so. Her courage inspires countless others.

What truly frightens authorities is that women keep organising, learning and leading despite the risks. They show their bravery in all-female teams of resistance units, risking their lives on the frontlines and motivating all of Iran to rise against the dictatorship. As Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the Iranian Resistance, has said: the courage and leadership of women will strike the regime where it least expects it. That’s why I and so many others are willing to pay the price.

How do families of victims support each other?

Our greatest strength is solidarity. The bonds between the families of the executed and political prisoners began at the prison gates and grew into a united front that has resisted two dictatorships – first the Shah, now the mullahs – for some 60 years. We are bound by a shared love of freedom, a desire for justice and a common enemy: the regime that took our loved ones.

What cements that bond is the cause for which our parents, children and siblings gave their lives: the liberation of Iran. My father’s and 120,000 other people’s blood was spilled by a regime that thought it could extinguish this desire for freedom – but it was wrong. Before his execution, my dad sent me a cassette tape with a message: ‘My daughter’s heart is her homeland. And because her homeland is captive, her heart is also captive’. His sacrifice taught me, and millions of young Iranians, that we must fight to win back our homeland.

Knowing I am not alone gives me strength. Together with other families of the executed and political prisoners, we transform grief into resolve. We provide each other with moral and material support, organise memorials, run international campaigns and document every crime of this regime. We stand side by side in courtrooms, at conferences and on the streets, making sure the world hears the truth.

This is a deeply rooted, organised resistance, built on the sacrifices of those before us. We keep the flame of resistance alive while supporting the new generation of resistance units fighting for a democratic Iran. Rajavi’s 10-Point Plan offers a path to that future.

How should world leaders respond to the regime’s brutality?

As someone who has lived through this system’s brutality, I want the international community to truly understand the cost of silence. For too long, a shameful policy of appeasement has bought time for the mullahs, leading to more executions, more repression and more terror exported abroad. When the world remains largely silent, it gives a green light for state murders to continue. The consequences are devastating: in 2023, Iran accounted for 74 per cent of the world’s recorded executions. Silence and inaction are complicity. The world must choose between standing with Iranian people or their executioners.

But mere verbal condemnations aren’t enough. We need tangible action: states should make all political and economic relations with this regime conditional on a complete halt to executions. We also demand accountability for those we’ve lost. We call on the international community to apply the principle of universal jurisdiction to bring the perpetrators to justice – including those responsible for the 1988 massacre – and judge them for committing crimes against humanity. The evidence is ready and the witnesses are waiting.

The international community must also reject the false choice between war and appeasement. There is a democratic alternative: the National Council of Resistance of Iran. We ask world leaders to end appeasement and stand on the right side of history, alongside Iran’s people.

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Iran: ‘The regime is executing protesters to create fear and suppress any attempt at new mobilisation’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Asal Abasian 24.Feb.2024
Iran: ‘The regime uses executions to maintain its grip on power through fear and intimidation’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Jasmin Ramsey 15.Feb.2024

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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 22 2025 (IPS)

A system-wide UN survey of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), described as “grave violations of human rights”, has revealed that in 2024, there were 675 allegations reported.

A UN message to staffers last week says this is “widely believed” to be “significant underreporting” because the real numbers may be much higher.

In 2023, 758 allegations were received, compared to 534 the previous year and 265 in 2018.

Of the 2023 figure, more than half, 384, were related to UN staff and affiliated personnel. The remainder concerned personnel from partners and non-UN military forces not under UN authority.

Risks increased significantly last year, with the unprecedented rise in humanitarian crises along with significant reductions in funding, especially in high-risk and complex contexts where the UN operates, according to the UN.

The deadline for this year’s survey has been extended through September 5.

In a message to staffers, the UN Special Coordinator on Improving UN Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, says: “We would like to thank everyone who has completed the survey so far – your engagement reflects your strong commitment to our values ensuring a safe, respectful environment free from sexual misconduct”.

“Your voice matters. We encourage those who have yet to complete the survey to take advantage of this brief extension period to express your views. Your voice is important in identifying the challenges and in helping to strengthen our collective efforts to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse across the system.”

“Your feedback helps shape real change – last year’s inputs enabled targeted concrete actions to be taken to address specific instances of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment along with improvements to how we protect people from sexual misconduct.”

Why take part?

The UN says:

• “We use your input to make a difference in how we prevent and address sexual misconduct
• It’s confidential – all responses are anonymous
• It’s quick and easy – it takes just a few minutes of your time!
• It’s inclusive – once again, the survey is available in 7 languages (6 official UN languages and Portuguese), and we have updated survey language to ensure accessibility for both UN and NGO personnel.”

Although progress has been made since 2017 through the establishment of new frameworks, policies and procedures, says the UN, sexual exploitation and abuse continues to occur across the UN system, particularly with peacekeeping forces.

https://conduct.unmissions.org/resources

Asked for her comments, Shihana Mohamed, a founding member, and one of the Coordinators of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion, told IPS UN-ANDI firmly opposes all forms of discrimination, abuse, racism, bias, and harassment – including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, and the abuse of power and authority.

“Sexual exploitation and abuse in the UN system are not isolated incidents—they are symptoms of deeper, intersecting patterns of racism, bias, and entrenched power imbalances that silence victims and erode institutional trust,” she pointed out.

The UN-ANDI survey revealed that 17% of staff of Asian origin experienced harassment or discrimination, including threats, emotional abuse, and even physical assault. When over 60% report experiences of racism and more than half feel invisible in their workplaces, the message is clear: systemic discrimination fuels a culture where abuse persists, and justice is out of reach.

These figures are not just statistics—they are a clear indictment of a system where systemic discrimination fosters a culture in which abuse is normalized, and justice is routinely denied, she argued.

“As a global norm-setting body, the United Nations cannot afford to merely uphold a stance of zero tolerance. It must actively pursue a reality of zero occurrence—embedding accountability into both its policies and the conduct of its personnel at every level”.

Protecting dignity requires confronting not only individual misconduct, but also the structures and cultures that enable sexual exploitation and other abuses to persist.

Justice, equity, and safety cannot be aspirational values—they must be lived, enforced, and institutionalized, declared Mohamed, a Sri Lankan national and recipient of the Public Voices Fellowship on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls – Equality Now.

UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters: “Our approach, which is centered on the rights and needs of victims, continues.”

“We are intensifying efforts to uphold the rights of victims, and to end impunity. This also includes engagement with Member States to facilitate the resolution of paternity claims.”

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE, Founder and CEO of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), told IPS: It’s 25 years since the Windhoek conference and declaration, when member states and the UN pledged to end peacekeepers’ sexual abuse and exploitation of women and girls in the communities they are mandated to protect.

“We have had SCR 1325 (Security Council Resolution) and other security council resolutions. There have been countless practical recommendations to mitigate such abuses,” she said.

For example, there was a recommendation to take simple mouth swabs as DNA samples of any peacekeeping and UN personnel sent out. This way any allegations of SEA could be verified immediately. But the UN leadership rejected the recommendation at the time, citing the human rights and privacy concerns for the international staff, she pointed out.

Abusers are meant to be investigated and held accountable in their own home countries. But this rarely happens.

“Yet those countries continue to provide peacekeepers. Why? There should be a rule that any incidents of SEA prevents that member state from contributing troops – until the trainings and conditions are addressed nationally”.

“We in the WPS community have also long called for increased recruitment and deployment of women as peacekeepers. The evidence shows that having just 5% more women in missions, correlates with 50% reduction of SEA. But despite the Elsie Initiatives we still see too few women recruited or given the opportunity to serve.”

The bottom line: when there is no political will or leadership honor to address such issues, they stay unresolved.

The tragedy is two fold: On the one hand we have incidents of young women being subjected to exploitation, and longer term trauma and likely ostracism, with no recourse. Their protectors became their abusers.

On the other hand, by not preventing or holding accountable the few perpetrators, the system denigrates itself and the thousands of extraordinary men and women who have dedicated their lives to service and to the protection of others, she noted.

“It’s hard to understand. But it is indicative of the abrogation of care and responsibility. The UN needs to take a firmer stance with troop contributing countries. They need to shift the shame and fear away from victims and on to the perpetrators.”

Perhaps if the peacekeepers were told that in case of any allegations, their families– mothers, daughters, wives– back home would be informed, they would think twice about abusing or exploiting local residents during deployment to war torn countries.

In a February 2025 report, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says since 2017, “we have continued to devote considerable attention and effort to improving the way the sector addresses the issue”.

System-wide coordination structures, global standards, technical tools, training, improved reporting mechanisms, and increased country-level support and capacity have all contributed to enhancing prevention, response, and transparency.

“However, challenges persist, and we remain committed to addressing these”.

“Our approach, which prioritizes the rights and dignity of victims, remains a key objective of our strategy. Efforts are ongoing to ensure victims have a voice and better access to assistance and support”.

While the Trust Fund for Victims of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse has been invaluable, very little funding remains in it. The Secretary-General urges Member States to make available adequate and sustainable support for prevention efforts and for victims and their children. Addressing the underlying issues such as inequality, extreme poverty, and lack of rule of law is crucial to ending this scourge.

The report also highlights the UN’s efforts to end impunity and ensure justice for victims. The Secretary-General calls on Member States to address accountability robustly and resolve outstanding paternity cases without delay. He remains steadfast and committed to effectively tackling this issue with the support of Member States.

“We will keep pushing forwards on this important issue,” said Guterres.

https://docs.un.org/en/A/79/789

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Credit: UNICEF/Michele Sibilon

By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Aug 21 2025 (IPS)

After taking oath of office in December 2016 as Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres described the eradication of sexual offenses by UN peacekeeping and all other UN personnel as the first item on his reform agenda.

During his first year in office in 2017, he convened a high-level meeting on combatting sexual exploitation and abuse and established a task force to address sexual harassment within the UN system.

But the saga of inaction continues and the situation on the SEA, as the phenomenon of the Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) is acronymized by the UN to avoid saying clearly what it stands for, remains totally appalling and unacceptable, eroding the credibility of the world’s most universal global body.

The UN’s so-called new approach to sexual offenses by UN personnel has proven to be little more than a public relations campaign marked by cosmetic adjustments that fail to address the systemic flaws that sustain a culture of impunity.

Helplessness of the UN is pitifully described in its latest report covering the year 2024 when it says that “Since 2017, we have continued to devote considerable attention and effort to improving the way to addresses the issue … However, challenges persist, and we remain committed to addressing these.” Nearly a decade has gone by and still there is no perceptible result in putting its own house in order by punishing the perpetrators and compensating the victims.

The latest UN report helplessly admits that “Since 2017, there has been an increase in the number of incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse reported …” It continues to share the bad news informing that “In 2024 alone, 675 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse were reported in connection with United Nations staff and related personnel (292) and implementing partners (383), with 27 per cent of those allegations involving child victims.”

It is shocking that more than one-fourth of the victims are children. What kind of child-abuser staff the UN authorities are recruiting, supervising and monitoring?

The UN report says, “Since 2017, senior United Nations officials have reported on their personal responsibility to address sexual exploitation and abuse through annual attestations in their compacts or management letters.”

And, unfortunately, the same report shockingly admits that “However, alarmingly, in 2024, the survey on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse revealed a significant rise in distrust towards leadership, with 6 per cent respondents in the United Nations system (approximately 3,700 individuals) expressing a lack of confidence in the ability of leaders to address sexual exploitation and abuse, doubling from 3 per cent in 2023.”

It is so hugely embarrassing for the leadership of the UN!

Its much-touted zero-tolerance and no-impunity policies have not improved the situation, according to longtime UN watchers. Zero-tolerance has become synonymous with zero-effectiveness. Zero-tolerance policy is applied by the UN system entities as if they are using a zebra-crossing on a street which does not have any traffic lights.

The labyrinthine rules, regulations, procedures, channels of communication of the UN make the mockery of the due-process and timely justice. These have been taken advantage of by the perpetrators time and again.

Unjust UN policies and practices have, over decades, resulted in a culture of impunity for sexual “misconduct” ranging from breaches of UN rules to grave crimes. As most of the SEA incidents happen at the field levels, nationalities and personal equations play a big role in delaying or denying justice.

The UN takes credit by underscoring that “Our approach, which prioritizes the rights and dignity of victims, remains a key objective of the Secretary General’s strategy. Efforts are ongoing to ensure victims have a voice and better access to assistance and support.” How about victims’ access to justice and due process?

The victim-centred approach of the UN in handling SEA cases has been manipulated by the perpetrators and their organizational colleagues to detract attention from their seriousness. Not only should the victims get the utmost attention, so should the abusers because upholding of the justice is also UN’s responsibility.

Also, UN watchers become curious whenever media publish such SEA related reports, the UN authorities invariably mentions the concerned staff is on leave or administrative leave. When these cases are in the public domain, the abusers are merrily enjoying the leave with full pay, even during the world body’s on-going dire liquidity crisis.

It is also known that during the leave the abusers have tried to settle the matter with the victims or their families with lucrative temptations. The leave has also been used to wipe off the evidence of the crime. These have happened in several cases with the full knowledge of the supervisors.

What a travesty of the victim-centred approach!

The head of the UN peace operations where the SEA cases take place should be asked by the Secretary-General to explain the occurrence as a part of his or her direct responsibility. Unless such drastic measures are taken the SEA will continue in the UN system.

Another unexpectable dimension of the victim-centred approach is that the abuser-peacekeepers are sent back home for dispensation of justice as per the agreement between the troops contributing countries (TCC) and the UN. Sending the perpetrators home for action by national authorities is one of the biggest reasons for the continuation of SEA in the peace operations.

The victim is not present in that kind of varied national military justice situation, and no evidence are available except UN-cleared reports to show or suppress the extent of abuse.

Again, a travesty of justice supported by the upholder of the global rule of law!

The UN Secretary-General would be well advised to propose to the Security Council a change in the clause of the agreement that UN signs with the TCCs which incorporates for repatriation of abuser-peacekeepers to their home countries. If a TCC refuse to do so, the agreement will not be signed.

A functional, quick-justice global tribunal should be set up with the mandate to try the peacekeepers as decided by the UN. If the International Criminal Court (ICC) can try heads of state or government for crimes against humanity, why can’t the UN peacekeepers be tried for SEA?

That would be a true victim-centred approach!

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations; Initiator of the UNSCR 1325 as the President of the UN Security Council in March 2000; Chairman of the UN General Assembly’s Main Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters and Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP)

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Stella_E/Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 13 2025 (IPS)

When Kenita Placide co-founded United and Strong, St Lucia’s first LGBTQI+ organisation in 2001, death threats were routine. Over the years, several friends were murdered for being gay. But 24 years on, Kenita’s Caribbean island nation has become the latest to overturn a colonial legacy that criminalised LGBTQI+ people.

On 29 July, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court – a St Lucia-based regional court that serves nine countries and territories – declared sections 132 and 133 of St Lucia’s Criminal Code unconstitutional, effectively decriminalising consensual same-sex sexual activity. This made St Lucia the fifth Caribbean country in four years to achieve this legal breakthrough through the courts.

St Lucia’s victory demonstrates that civil society can keep making gains even in largely regressive times. It offers fresh hope for LGBTQI+ activists in the six countries of the Americas that criminalise same-sex relations: Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago.

Colonial laws, contemporary resistance

All the criminalising countries in the Americas are part of the Commonwealth Caribbean, where the prohibition of consensual same-sex sexual activity remains an enduring legacy of British colonial rule.

Following independence in 1979, St Lucia retained criminal provisions that punished ‘buggery’ and ‘gross indecency’. Rather than liberalising these laws, a 2004 amendment expanded criminalisation to include sex between women, with jail sentences ranging from five to 10 years.

While prosecutions have been rare in recent decades, these laws have fostered stigma, legitimised prejudice and contributed to discrimination and violence against LGBTQI+ people. They’ve hindered access to essential services, particularly healthcare, and denied LGBTQI+ people full legal protection. Civil society has documented numerous instances of verbal harassment, physical abuse and discrimination in workplaces and public spaces.

The tide began to turn over the past decade. The Commonwealth Caribbean’s first public Pride event was held in Jamaica in 2015, marking the growing visibility of the LGBTQI+ movement. Laws began to change, starting with a successful court challenge in Belize in 2016.

Civil society’s strategic litigation

The legal challenge in St Lucia was spearheaded by the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality, founded by Kenita in 2016, and United and Strong, which evolved from an HIV/AIDS organisation into a human rights group documenting abuses, advocating for reforms and providing essential services.

Together, they brought the case as part of a Caribbean litigation strategy launched in 2019, filing challenges in four Eastern Caribbean countries – Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis and St Lucia – plus Barbados, which has its own court system. The lawsuit argued that virtually identical criminal provisions violated constitutional rights to privacy, equality and liberty. Positive rulings came for Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St Kitts and Nevis in 2022, while a separate legal challenge succeeded in Dominica in 2024.

St Lucia’s ruling was particularly significant given recent setbacks, including the recriminalisation of consensual same-sex relations in Trinidad and Tobago in March, reversing a 2018 court ruling, and the dismissal of challenges to anti-gay laws in St Vincent and the Grenadines last year.

The road ahead: from decriminalisation to equality

Legal reforms are still needed. While the 2006 Labour Code prohibits workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and the 2022 Domestic Violence Act protects same-sex couples from abuse, significant gaps remain in housing and public services protection.

Future civil society advocacy is expected to focus on broader legal protections, marriage equality, adoption rights, recognition of non-binary genders, gender change procedures and banning harmful practices such as conversion therapy. But conservative religious groups, which hold significant sway in many Caribbean societies, are expected to resist further advances, which they frame as threats to traditional values. Experiences in Dominica and elsewhere suggest that backlash is likely.

Evidence indicates laws are moving faster than public opinion. St Lucia now ranks 154th out of 198 countries on Equaldex’s Equality Index, which rates countries according to their LGBTQI+ friendliness. But the index shows a significant gap between limited legal protections and broadly negative social attitudes, with legal rights scoring 46 out of 100 while public opinion lags at just 17 out of 100.

While governments and courts can advance recognition of LGBTQI+ rights through legislative and judicial reforms, deep-seated social prejudices may remain. Activists face a double challenge: pursuing legal victories while simultaneously engaging in the slower, more complex work of changing attitudes. Without this parallel effort, legal protections may fail to translate into genuine equality in daily life, leaving LGBTQI+ people formally protected but still vulnerable.

St Lucia’s LGBTQI+ rights activists still have much work ahead, but their approach – combining grassroots organising, strategic litigation, regional coordination and decades of persistence – offers a blueprint for others striving for rights. It proves that even in conservative contexts, civil society can achieve change by building coalitions and persisting over time. St Lucia has just offered fresh hope to embattled activists elsewhere in the Caribbean, and around the world.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

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