A street in Faizabad, the capital of Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province. Lailuma’s home province of Badakhshan has been plagued by clashes between various armed groups. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
FAYZABAD, Afghanistan, Aug 21 2026 (IPS)

Afghanistan has seen a number of unexplained murders in recent months.

One of the latest victims is Lailuma, the wife of well-known local singer Salam Maftoon and a community activist.

The murder took place in Ishkashim district, in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, Afghanistan, in early May. Lailuma was arriving at her restaurant when unidentified assailants shot her in a market area near the provincial government buildings.

Locals say there were several witnesses to the incident and that the attackers fled the scene immediately after the shooting. People rushed to help Lailuma, who was seriously injured, but she died before reaching the hospital. She was 35 years old.

The attackers have not yet been identified, and the motive for the murder is not officially known.

Lailuma’s senseless murder left many women in a state of terror and deep grief, locals say. Women who previously worked in tailoring workshops or at food stalls selling traditional bolani bread have now stopped working, fearing Lailuma’s fate

Lailuma is not the only victim. In May, the online media outlet Rawa News reported on several recent murders across the country. Among the victims was well-known tribal leader Hajiullah Nazar, who was shot.

According to the human rights organization Rawadar, at least, 611 people were killed or injured in targeted attacks, summary executions or other similar incidents in Afghanistan last year. This is more than 40 percent more than the previous year.

The majority of the victims were men. Among them were former government employees, people allegedly linked to the opposition, protesters, tribal leaders and other prominent figures in the community.

Targeted killings are particularly worrying in remote provinces, where the authorities’ capacity to provide security is limited, Rawa News reports. For example, Lailuma’s home province of Badakhshan has been plagued by clashes between various armed groups.

Lailuma opened a women-only restaurant and tailoring workshop in the city after the Taliban closed schools and universities to girls.

Her goal was to provide girls and women, as well as herself, with employment opportunities amid the difficult conditions in Afghanistan. At the same time, she sought to protect them from forced marriages.

Seven women worked in the restaurant and 11 girls in the tailoring workshop. The girls also received training for their work.

Lailuma also supported her family with her work, as restrictions on performing music had taken away her musician husband’s income. He has not been able to perform in concerts or festivals due to the restrictions imposed by the Taliban regime.

“I remember well how my wife worked in her restaurant together with other women and how active the girls in the tailoring workshop were. She was very enthusiastic about her work and emphasized to her colleagues that you should never lose hope,” Maftoon says.

He doesn’t understand what his wife’s “crime” was that she had to die for it.

Fatima (name changed), a 45-year-old close relative of Lailuma, says that it was the first restaurant in her village. Most residents in the area had never seen a restaurant for women only before.

“Women could go to a restaurant and eat together. It made us happy.”

Fatima can’t understand why Lailuma had to be killed.

Lailuma had already received several anonymous death threats, but she ignored them. She would often say that one day she would be able to help the women of her own village overcome their difficulties. Instead, she herself became a victim.

Lailuma’s senseless murder left many women in a state of terror and deep grief, locals say. Women who previously worked in tailoring workshops or at food stalls selling traditional bolani bread have now stopped working, fearing Lailuma’s fate.

Many of them do not even dare to attend funerals or wedding ceremonies. Recently, fewer and fewer women have been seen in the village center or at the local market.

“I don’t think any of the girls in this village dare to go to work or be active in any way. They don’t even dare to leave their homes,” says one villager.

Rahima (name changed), who also worked at Lailuma’s restaurant, says that after that day she has not dared to work again.

“That day they killed Lailuma. On another day it could be someone else from our restaurant.”

Nadia (name changed), a women’s rights activist, says that Afghan women are currently not safe even in the few jobs they still have. Most of the work available to them is related to small-scale private entrepreneurship, such as tailoring, handicrafts or, alternatively, working in a restaurant.

“Mysterious murders like this make women give up hope of getting a job or maintaining social relationships. Even life itself can seem meaningless.”

She hopes that the international community and human rights organizations will be more active in highlighting the violence and oppression experienced by Afghan women, which is present everywhere, both inside and outside the home.

Excerpt:

Fawzia Koofi, former Deputy Speaker of the Afghan Parliament, says the country is experiencing gender apartheid.

By Ariel F. Dumont
ROME, Aug 20 2026 (IPS)

FIVE years after the Taliban returned to power, Fawzia Koofi, the former Deputy Speaker of the Afghan Parliament, denounces what she describes as “gender apartheid.”

Despite bans, terror, and the systematic erasure of women from society, Afghan women continue to resist through underground schools and online solidarity networks.

Koofi was also a member of the official delegation that represented the Afghan government during the 2020 peace negotiations with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar.

Since the fall of Kabul, she has been living in Europe after being evacuated from Afghanistan, where she continues to advocate for Afghan women and campaign for political alternatives to Taliban rule. Speaking with IPS, Koofi explains how the Taliban have systematically erased women from public life while describing the resilience and determination of Afghan women to continue resisting.

IPS: Three years after their return to power, the Taliban have gradually stripped women of all their rights. Today you describe the situation as genuine gender apartheid. How would you describe the condition of Afghan women?

Fawzia Koofi: Women have gradually lost their rights as the Taliban imposed increasingly restrictive measures through a series of decrees. In 2021, girls were banned from attending secondary school. Then, in 2022, women were barred from universities. In 2024, they were no longer allowed to study medicine, not even gynaecology.

Today, every field of education is closed to them. Compared with the first Taliban regime, the current restrictions are even harsher. Yet Afghan women continue to resist because they know education is essential, and their families understand that it is vital. They attend classes in clandestine home-based schools.

Most of these home schools are run by NGOs that pay teachers’ salaries and sometimes even cover students’ internet connection costs. They also provide online English and computer courses. These schools do not issue diplomas. Nevertheless, students receive an education that sometimes enables them to start an online business, pursue distance learning while remaining underground, or teach other young girls.

IPS: How do these underground schools operate, and how do women manage to escape repression?

Koofi: Officially, these schools do not exist; they are not registered. As a result, whenever the Taliban discover them, they can arrest the teachers, students, or those responsible for running them. That is exactly what happened to one of the networks I helped establish, for example, in Ghor Province, in central-western Afghanistan, and also in Badakhshan, in the country’s northeast. They raided the schools and arrested the staff. In other cases, however, they may be more lenient when members of their families attend these schools.

The curriculum focuses on science, computer skills, and English to help women and girls obtain scholarships, work online, or run online businesses. Some women who manage to build small businesses personally take charge of marketing in an effort to expand their activities. Unfortunately, without diplomas or accreditation, professional opportunities remain extremely limited for most women.

Many Afghan women living in exile devote a large part of their time to providing online education for women inside Afghanistan. We connect them with university students and try to teach them English or other languages. It is regrettable that Western governments repeatedly promise to defend women’s rights while failing to provide the funding or scholarships that would allow Afghan women to continue their studies abroad, return home one day, and help rebuild their country. The Taliban’s declared objective is to erase women from Afghan society in the name of Islamic morality.

IPS: Why do you use the term gender apartheid?

Koofi: Because, little by little, women have been completely erased from public life. Some women tell me that when they walk through the streets of Kabul and encounter Taliban officials or soldiers, they are often looked at as though they were criminals.

They are told: “You are not allowed to work or attend university, so why are you out in the street?”

That is precisely the principle of apartheid: separating a gender or a group of people on the basis of their sex, race, or religion and excluding them from society. That is exactly what the Taliban are doing.

The silence of the international community is deeply regrettable. Some governments occasionally condemn the Taliban system, but that is where it ends.

Even worse, they adopt the same kind of practices.

The United Kingdom, for instance, continues to say, “We support Afghan women,” while refusing to grant student visas for fear that applicants might later seek political asylum. It makes no sense. How many of them would actually do so? Two hundred students? In a situation where they can neither study nor work in their own country, it should not be considered a problem if they apply for asylum.

All these contradictions, together with the international community’s lack of action, only encourage and strengthen the Taliban, who interpret this as a form of recognition and legitimacy.

Many experts say that women are disappearing from public space in Afghanistan. Do you agree with that assessment?

Koofi: Imagine the reality faced by women living there today, who are not even allowed to leave their homes freely. Take humanitarian aid distribution as an example.

In many regions, aid distribution is controlled by the Taliban with the assistance of the local councils they have appointed. Beneficiaries are selected from among relatives or supporters.

Single women, such as war widows with dependent children, or women who lost their jobs under Taliban rule, are excluded from receiving aid. And when they protest, the local council members appointed by the Taliban report them, and they are arrested.

There have been cases of sexual violence in Taliban prisons.

The Taliban have locked down the entire system by systematically controlling the country and all its institutions. If local council members rebel or fail to cooperate sufficiently, they are simply replaced. That is how the system functions.

Yet women continue to resist and to protest in order to survive, although it is far from easy. Some open beauty salons or small shops inside their homes. A few television channels that have reached agreements with the Taliban and comply with censorship are still allowed to employ women, but they are required to wear face masks while on air. In effect, they have become spokespersons for the Taliban, who tightly control the news that they broadcast.

Are there still any spaces where women can enjoy some degree of freedom?

They are becoming increasingly rare. Last month in Herat, in western Afghanistan, the Taliban arrested more than 60 women who were not wearing the burqa but instead a large headscarf in keeping with local tradition. Their families and other women protested, and for once, men also took to the streets. The Taliban responded by opening fire. To them, human life has very little value. They arrest, imprison, torture, and kill.

On April 28, they arrested three members of my family as well as one of our gardeners. They then confiscated my house. My relatives were held in solitary confinement for a week and tortured. We managed to mobilise social media, and my family was eventually released. All this simply because I am able to speak to the media and communicate with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Kabul.

In most cases, however, families do not even know where their loved ones are being held. They can disappear for months. The media do not report these cases because they are controlled by the Taliban. This is the reality for everyone. Women continue to write and to protest through social media, each in their own way.

Do you feel that the world has forgotten Afghanistan and Afghan women?

Yes. The world paved the way for the Taliban’s return.

Let us remember the Doha Agreement signed between the Taliban and the United States, which says absolutely nothing about the condition of women or about human rights in general. A

ll of this encouraged the Taliban.

I took part in those negotiations, and the Taliban told me that women’s rights were not among the priorities of my American and European friends. Unfortunately, they were right.

Now the European Union has invited the Taliban to negotiate the return of Afghans living abroad irregularly or individuals considered to pose a security threat. This approach is rather strange and paradoxical because as long as conditions in Afghanistan do not improve, people will continue to want to leave.

Everyone living in the country wants to leave. I speak by telephone every day with Afghans, and every one of them tells me they want to leave. Without work, without education, and without freedom, there is no dignity.

It is absurd. The European Union is engaging with the Taliban, who will simply exploit these negotiations for their benefit.

The attention of Western countries, and indeed of the world as a whole, is focused on other major conflicts. I believe this is a mistake because, sooner or later, Afghanistan will become a rear base for several violent extremist groups.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Islamic State (ISIS), and Al-Qaeda remain highly active in the region. In fact, Al-Qaeda’s leader was killed only two kilometres from the Taliban presidential palace in July 2022.

To claim that the Taliban will effectively fight these groups while allowing them to govern the country is, in my view, sheer hypocrisy. The world must act before it is too late. We are not asking for NATO troops to return. Rather, we are asking governments not to encourage or support the Taliban.

Unfortunately, I have the feeling that human rights — and women’s rights in particular — are simply not considered a strategic issue or a priority. That is the reality.

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Amna Idres Musa Mahamod leads the Al-Wifag Women’s Association in Toker, Sudan. Photographed for the Through Her Lens: Women Rising for Peace Exhibition. Credit: UN Women/Mona Elfateh

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2026 (IPS)

Women-led and women’s rights organizations (WLOs) in humanitarian settings are collapsing amidst a complicated predicament in which needs are surging and international support is dwindling.

These organizations are often the first responders in humanitarian and conflict settings, providing psychosocial and gender-based violence (GBV) support; however, 84 percent of WLOs surveyed report that women and girls in the communities they serve have reduced access to essential services, according to UN Women’s July 2026 Beyond the Breaking Point report.

The report surveyed 855 WLOs operating across 52 crisis- and conflict-affected countries and found that as women and girls face heightened risks and increased need for assistance, services and support have dwindled significantly. Nine in ten organizations say they cannot meet the current levels of need, and two in five expect to shut down either temporarily or permanently within the next year.

Galit Wolfensohn, UN Women’s Humanitarian Research and Knowledge Management Specialist

Beyond the Breaking Point builds off UN Women’s alarm first raised in their 2025 report, At a Breaking Point. In it, they warned that half of WLOs surveyed in crisis zones risked closure within six months if current funding levels persisted. Fifteen months later, the situation remains the same. When asked what the warning in ‘At a Breaking Point’ generated from donors, Galit Wolfensohn, UN Women’s Humanitarian Research and Knowledge Management Specialist, told Inter Press Service it brought “greater recognition among donor governments and humanitarian partners of the severe consequences that funding reductions were having.” She added that the response has “not matched the scale or urgency of the crisis…the latest findings show that recognition alone is not enough.”

When examining the collapse of WLOs, Sudan offers an illuminating case to understand the on-the-ground impacts of the reduction of services. Over three years of conflict in Sudan have driven GBV needs to unprecedented levels, with the number of girls and women requiring GBV services quadrupling since the conflict began. However, two-thirds of WLOs in Sudan reported having to close or significantly reduce services, and half expect to close entirely within the next year without urgent financial support.

Salvator Nkurunziza, UN Women’s Representative in Sudan

As WLOs across Sudan have had to either close or scale back operations, Nkurunziza explained that “women and girls lose access not only to critical support but also to safe spaces that provide protection, psychosocial assistance, information, and a sense of security.” WLOs act as trusted entry points for survivors of GBV seeking help, and when these services disappear and become harder to access, survivors “may be less able or willing to seek assistance.” When services disappear, it creates a vicious cycle that “can result in prolonged exposure to violence, increased psychosocial distress, and heightened protection risks,” including greater reliance on “negative coping mechanisms, like child marriage and other harmful practices.”

“What we are observing is likely only the surface, as the absence of quality services is deterring those in need from seeking help,” Fabrizia Falcione, UNFPA’s Representative in Sudan, said on help-seeking behaviors in GBV survivors. In El Obeid, UNFPA estimates that 55,712 women and girls are at an increased risk of GBV as of August.

Fabrizia Falcione, UNFPA’s Representative in Sudan

Despite the operational and financial challenges, he remarked that many Sudanese WLOs “have demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability”. Organizations have “continued to provide services by reprioritizing activities, mobilizing community-based volunteers, utilizing remote modalities where feasible, and strengthening partnerships with other local actors to share resources and referral networks.” However, Nkurunziza was clear that these adaptive approaches “are not a substitute for sustained financial support.”

On a global scale, Wolfensohn outlined the changes that need to happen within the next six months to reverse the course of what was documented in the reports. “Donors must protect and increase funding for WLOs by providing direct, flexible, predictable and multi-year financing,” she said.

At the same time, Wolfensohn emphasized that funding alone is not sufficient: “women’s organizations must be recognized as essential humanitarian partners through meaningful participation and leadership in humanitarian coordination and decision-making.”

Reversing the current trajectory requires a type of accountability that does not yet exist: “measurable commitments, clear funding targets and greater transparency on how much humanitarian financing reaches local women-led organizations directly,” Wolfensohn said. Without decisive action, WLOs will be forced to scale back or close services globally.

“Reversing this trend is not only about sustaining organizations; it is about safeguarding access to protection services, GBV prevention and response, livelihoods support, and other critical assistance relied upon by women and girls in crisis settings,” Wolfensohn remarked.

In the weeks since Beyond the Breaking Point was published, Wolfensohn discussed the impact the report has had in increasing conversations between donors, governments, and humanitarian organizations. “The discussions generated by the report are helping to reinforce broader humanitarian reform agendas focused on localization, equitable partnerships and the meaningful participation of affected communities,” Wolfensohn said. However, she stopped short of claiming progress at the scale required to reverse the trends documented in the course, but “it should serve as a catalyst for action.”

UN organizations are already working in collaboration to close the funding gaps WLOs face in Sudan. According to Falcione, the approach is not only about advocacy, but also about working with WLOs “as genuine partners in the response.” Agencies like UNFPA and UN Women “support local and grassroots organizations in capacity development, institutional strengthening, leadership, and empowerment.” Falcione underscored the importance of strengthening the partnership, as WLOs “are not simply beneficiaries or implementing partners, they are essential actors in the humanitarian response.”

Over the course of fifteen months, UN Women’s reports have painted a picture from warning to confirming what happens when WLOs disappear. In Wolfensohn’s own framing, what comes next depends on measurement and follow-through. This requires donors publicly tracking what funds reach WLOs, and commitment to multi-year flexible financing. Recognition alone will not solve the problem, and supporting WLOs is the difference between a third report that documents reversals of these trends or repeats the same warnings.

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Children play outside their home at a shelter in the Philippines. Credit: UNICEF/Joshua Estey

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2026 (IPS)

On July 7, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented a report from the Special Rapporteur on the sale, sexual exploitation, and sexual abuse of children, Ai Kihara-Hunt, to the General Assembly, underscoring her goals and priorities for the implementation of protection measures for children worldwide.

The report, submitted in coordination with the Human Rights Council, highlights the systemic barriers that leave children increasingly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse, including weak government oversight, limited support and justice services for victims, and worsening protracted crises.

“Given the complexity, hidden and transnational nature of the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children, the Special Rapporteur believes that robust child protection systems and effective cooperation within each State and across borders are essential to combat the phenomena,” the report reads. “Addressing the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children requires a human rights-based approach grounded in the best interests of the child and informed by the dignity, agency and resilience of children.”

Drawing largely from contributions by UN member states, international agencies, civil society groups, and humanitarian organizations, the report outlines key mechanisms for cooperation, accountability, and the prevention of human rights violations against children. The report incorporates global perspectives from diverse stakeholders and the lived experiences of survivors, prioritizing protection, recovery, rehabilitation, and access to justice through frameworks that are gender-responsive, disability-inclusive, victim-centered, trauma-informed, and fundamentally grounded in children’s rights.

This follows the 61st session of the Human Rights Council on March 10, where former Special Rapporteur Mama Fatima Singhateh warned that emerging digital technologies are revolutionizing how perpetrators commit abuse and rendering online spaces increasingly dangerous for children. Singhateh urged closer cooperation between humanitarian actors, governments, and stakeholders to prevent digital advancements from creating “new pathways” for human rights violations.

Singhateh also issued a child-friendly version of her final report to the Human Rights Council on April 20, emphasizing the importance of accessibility so that children can engage meaningfully in the discussions that affect them most. Moving forward, Kihara-Hunt aims to build upon her predecessors’ work by addressing issues that have not received adequate attention or sustained engagement from the UN. Key priorities include the “complex or rapidly evolving” challenges linked with intersecting global crises and the alarming rise of sexual exploitation across digital contexts.

The Special Rapporteur notes that online spaces allow children to express consent and agreement based on their evolving capacities, which may grow increasingly complex amid the introduction of emerging technologies. The rise of artificial intelligence has been a major concern for humanitarian organizations as these technologies have streamlined the production and dissemination of harmful child material, as well as the collection of unauthorized images and the misuse of personal data.

Additionally, the report highlights how digital technologies—such as social media platforms, messaging applications, and cryptocurrencies—have streamlined recruitment into armed groups and trafficking and exploitation, while simultaneously helping perpetrators evade law enforcement.

“Child sexual exploitation and abuse are driven by a range of factors, including harmful social norms, stigma, gender inequality, power imbalances, poverty, and weaknesses in child protection and support systems,” Afrooz Kaviani Johnson, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, tells Inter Press Service. “Today, the digital environment is increasingly implicated in these harms. Children face risks such as grooming, coercion, sexual exploitation, and abuse facilitated through digital platforms. Emerging technologies, including generative AI, are also expanding the scale and severity of risks.”

A core pillar of Kihara-Hunt’s mandate is to urge the private sector to adopt stricter safety policies rooted in human rights and children’s privacy—a responsibility that extends across organizations, from employees and volunteers to business partners. The report notes that market incentives and commercialization and profit-driven systems will be monitored in the ways they may or may not be contributing to a harmful environment that facilitates the sexual exploitation of children, particularly online.

“A safety-by-design approach involves assessing and mitigating foreseeable risks that platforms, messaging services, gaming environments or artificial intelligence systems may facilitate the sale of children, child sexual exploitation and abuse, and to actively detect, report and remove child sexual abuse materials,” the report states. “Beyond these responsibilities, the Special Rapporteur intends to examine how business actors can play proactive roles, in collaboration with States and other relevant stakeholders, in prevention, safeguarding, reporting and support for children.”

The report also noted that children residing in areas affected by armed conflict and humanitarian crises face heightened risks of sale and sexual exploitation, leaving them roughly twice as likely to experience rape and sexual assault during childhood compared to the global average. Other related drivers of sexual exploitation include forced displacement, natural disasters, and climate change. In these contexts, humanitarian aid is significantly limited, which often leads to constraints on protection measures and civil society intervention.

“Humanitarian crises such as conflict, displacement, climate-related shocks, and public health emergencies can disrupt the systems that help keep children safe,” said Johnson. “They can increase children’s exposure to risk while reducing access to essential services and support.”

“Poverty and financial hardship can also increase vulnerability, particularly in situations where exploitation involves an exchange of money, goods, or other benefits. Children who are displaced, on the move, living with disabilities, or affected by humanitarian crises often face multiple and overlapping risks.”

Economic instability and inequality also serve as primary drivers of child sexual exploitation. According to the report, children who are “outside the formal protection networks”—such as those experiencing statelessness—frequently are the victims of abuse from adults, peers, and in some instances, even law enforcement officials. Displaced children are similarly vulnerable, often barred from reporting crimes out of fear of detention or deportation. Without official identity documentation to access support services, and frequently separated from family members, stateless and migrant children face reduced adult supervision, which drastically increases vulnerability.

To build on her predecessors’ initiatives, Kihara-Hunt intends to prioritize youth participation and develop a mandate that empowers children. She aims to urge governments, tech companies, and stakeholders to build safer online spaces. Furthermore, Kihara-Hunt is committed to pressing for stronger cooperation between sectors, particularly within public health and education.

“The role of the public health sector in the rehabilitation of child victims and survivors extends beyond recovery and reintegration and includes promoting a shift from a criminal justice response towards one centered on the health and well-being of the child. Meanwhile, the education sector contributes across all stages of prevention, protection and response, as further elaborated on below.”

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Syrian women speak out about obstetric violence while giving birth. Credit: Sonia Al-Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
ALEPPO, Syria, Aug 11 2026 (IPS)

The abuse 30-year-old Nour Al-Badawi experienced in an Aleppo public hospital while giving birth resulted in her having two major follow-up operations and left her with depression and anxiety.

She is one Syrian woman who spoke out to IPS about “obstetric violence” – a term that refers to physical, verbal, or psychological abuse by healthcare providers; medical interventions performed without the pregnant woman’s informed consent; and violations of her dignity and privacy within healthcare facilities.

The experience of these women extends far beyond medical challenges and harsh humanitarian conditions.

Obstetric violence encompasses all forms of abuse, neglect, violations of dignity and privacy, or the performance of medical interventions without informed consent.

Al-Badawi describes her most recent childbirth experience as one of the harshest chapters of her life.

“Poverty forces us to give birth in public hospitals and endure the mistreatment that takes place there. Because of the violence and abuse I experienced during childbirth, I no longer consider becoming pregnant again.”

Nour explains that her suffering was not limited to verbal insults and violations of her dignity but extended to violent practices during the delivery process, including forceful pressure on her abdomen, as well as an improperly performed procedure to widen the birth canal. This resulted in serious uterine complications that required two surgical operations to treat an obstetric urinary fistula.

The experience completely transformed Nour’s life. She developed severe depression and a constant desire for isolation. Her family also faced significant financial burdens to cover the costs of her treatment, forcing her to sell some of her belongings and resort to borrowing money.

Despite what happened to Nour, her husband chose not to make any comment and said he would not file a complaint or take legal action against the healthcare centre where the delivery took place, fearing further disputes and additional difficulties. Instead, he assumed responsibility for caring for his wife and covering her treatment expenses.

Farida Al-Hassoun (26), from Hama, also remembers the day she gave birth to her first child at a public hospital as one of the most difficult days of her life — not only because of the pain of labour, but also because of the way she was treated by nurses and midwives inside the hospital.

“I was screaming from the pain, but a nurse told me to be quiet and said I was exaggerating. No one explained what they were going to do. I was shocked when they stitched the wound resulting from childbirth without anaesthesia. At that moment, I felt indescribable pain,” Al-Hassoun said.

She points out that her fear increased as her questions were ignored and she received no psychological support during childbirth. After leaving the hospital, she was unable to forget the experience and continued to suffer from anxiety for months whenever she remembered the delivery room.

Al-Hassoun asks: “Can a Syrian woman give birth with dignity, or will violence inside delivery rooms remain a silent experience that no one steps forward to stop?”

Dr Ola Al-Omar (36), an obstetrician and gynaecologist, discusses the risks of obstetric violence, saying:

“In Syria, years of war and economic collapse have placed increasing pressure on the healthcare system, which has affected the quality of maternal care services. Shortages of medical staff, overcrowded hospitals, and declining resources have all contributed to creating an environment in which women are exposed to mistreatment during pregnancy and childbirth.”

She said that obstetric violence took many forms, including performing medical interventions without explaining them to the patient or obtaining her informed consent; using humiliating expressions; blaming women for crying out during labour; failing to respect privacy inside delivery rooms; depriving women of sufficient information about their health condition; ignoring their pain; or delaying the provision of necessary care.

She emphasises that every woman has the right to receive respectful maternity care, including the preservation of her dignity and privacy, obtaining informed consent before any medical intervention, receiving the necessary information to make decisions regarding her health, and being protected from humiliation, discrimination, or neglect.

Social and Psychological Counsellor Sereen Al-Sheikh (33), from the city of Idlib in northern Syria, speaks about the suffering of pregnant women, saying: “I have met many women who were subjected to artificial induction of labour to accelerate the delivery process, even though the mother’s cervix was already dilated, as well as repeated vaginal examinations that caused severe distress and trauma. In addition, patients are not allowed to have companions present during childbirth, and their movement is sometimes restricted.”

Al-Sheikh explains that these practices leave long-term psychological effects, including fear of becoming pregnant again, postpartum psychological disorders, and a loss of trust in healthcare institutions.

“Most women choose silence out of fear of social stigma, as well as because it is difficult to prove that violations or abuses have occurred. These incidents often take place without evidence or witnesses and, therefore, pass without accountability,” she says.

A childbirth experience may end with the arrival of a newborn into the world, but for some Syrian women, what follows is a long journey of fear and trauma.

At a moment that is supposed to be among the safest and most reassuring experiences in a woman’s life, some Syrian women find themselves facing an entirely different reality: cries that no one listens to, medical procedures carried out without explanation or consent, and harsh words that remain engraved in their memories for years after childbirth.

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Anti-FGM activists protests outside the National Assembly in Banjul, The Gambia, on 18 March 2024, as lawmakers discuss a bill seeking to lift the ban on FGM. Credit: by Muhamadou Bittaye/AFP

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 3 2026 (IPS)

Last August, a one-month-old girl in The Gambia bled to death after being subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that had been illegal in the country since 2015. FGM is a human rights violation, whatever the appeals to faith or tradition made in its defence, but now the Gambian Supreme Court is being asked to strike the country’s ban down. This is the second attempt in two years to make FGM legal again.

Civil society stopped it the first time. When a repeal bill reached the National Assembly in 2024, the Network Against Gender-Based Violence brought survivors to testify, lobbied legislators, ran radio programmes and obtained a ruling from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University saying that FGM is not required under Islam. The bill fell in July 2024.

The ongoing fight in The Gambia is a measure of how fragile advances in the recognition of rights are. FGM is in retreat across most of the countries where it is practised, the result of decades of campaigning by survivors and community organisations. But holding that ground is becoming harder, as the money supporting those campaigns dries up and a resurgent anti-rights movement works to recast FGM as a traditional practice under foreign attack.

A practice in retreat

Over 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, with an additional four million cut every year. But the direction of travel has changed. A 2024 UNICEF report found that half of the decline in prevalence over the past 30 years has come in the last decade, with rates among adolescent girls halved or cut by 30-plus percentage points in countries including Ethiopia, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Attitudes have shifted too. Around 400 million people in practising countries, two-thirds of the population, now say they want FGM to end.

That change has a clear source. The Joint Programme run by UNICEF and the UN Population Fund found that the sharpest reductions come where communities are supported to deliberate and then commit, publicly and collectively, to abandoning the practice. The UN channels funding and provides coordination, but the dialogues, declarations and door-to-door persuasion are the work of community activists, national organisations and survivor networks. Thanks to these civil society efforts, in 2025 alone, over 7.5 million people took part in community dialogues and over 190,000 religious leaders and community influencers publicly denounced FGM.

The tools that work

Where campaigners have targeted the religious justifications that sustain FGM, results have followed. In 2025, Islamic scholars in Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia issued a joint ruling saying that nothing in the faith requires FGM. Litigation has proved another powerful tool. In July 2025, the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States found Sierra Leone in breach of its international obligations for failing to criminalise FGM, and said that, when intentionally inflicted, the practice meets the threshold of torture. In India, the Supreme Court has begun hearing whether cutting among the Dawoodi Bohra community should lose constitutional protection as an essential religious practice. And this June, Colombia became the first country in Latin America to ban FGM, driven by Emberá Indigenous women campaigning against a practice carried out in their own community.

Prohibition is now the norm rather than the exception, with Djibouti and Guinea writing bans into their constitutions in 2025. But laws alone don’t necessarily change what happens on the ground, and enforcement remains thin. Arrests and prosecutions rose sharply in 2025, yet there were still only 711 FGM court cases all year. In The Gambia, the fine imposed on the country’s first convicted cutters was paid by a prominent imam, an act that helped galvanise the campaign seeking to repeal the ban.

The movement’s defunding

The tactics that drove three decades of progress are now being starved of funding, with budget cuts falling hardest on the survivor-led and grassroots groups that are most effective but always face the toughest struggles for support. Funding for the Joint Programme fell from US$29.6 million in 2024 to US$16.3 million in 2025. The dismantling of USAID removed the largest single source of civil society funding worldwide, and total US foreign aid halved in a year. The UK, once the biggest funder of FGM prevention, is winding down its flagship programme with no replacement, so it can spend more on weapons.

The economics make no sense, because every dollar invested in prevention brings a tenfold return. The Joint Programme estimates that treating the health consequences of FGM currently costs US$1.4 billion a year. Politics, though, is playing a big part. In global north countries, political shifts are driving the withdrawal of aid, and far-right parties invoke FGM to stigmatise migrant communities while also opposing the gender justice policies that would make a difference. In practising countries, prohibition is increasingly recast as a foreign imposition on culture and faith. What unites these arguments is a shared sleight of hand that treats FGM as a question of cultural identity rather than a violation of fundamental human rights.

Elimination by 2030, the target that states set when they agreed the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, is already out of reach. But the evidence on what works is not in dispute, and it points towards communities and grassroots movements. The question is whether governments that claim to value human rights will keep supporting those delivering progress, or let a generation of girls pay the price of retreat.

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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Josephine Sembeyo (in blue) competes during Kenya's World Athletics Under-20 trials in May, where she qualified for the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Oregon. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
OLOITOKTOK, Kenya, Jul 30 2026 (IPS)

Before sunrise each morning, 19-year-old Josephine Sembeyo joins dozens of teenage runners leaving Magnolia Athletics Camp for training beneath the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The quiet morning air is broken only by the rhythm of footsteps along the dusty roads that have shaped generations of Kenyan distance runners.

But for Sembeyo, every kilometre represents far more than preparation for the 2026 World Athletics Under-20 Championships, where she will represent Kenya in the 1,500 metres.

Running has given her a chance she once feared might never come: to complete her education, support her family and make choices about her own future.

“Life hasn’t been easy for us. My father married a second wife and left my mother to raise us on her own. Seeing everything my mother has gone through motivates me every day. I want to succeed in athletics and education so that one day I can support her and my siblings and give them a better life,” Sembeyo says.

Girls from Magnolia Athletics Camp during a daily road training session in Oloitokitok, Kenya. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

A Camp Creating New Possibilities

Sembeyo is among 45 girls from pastoralist communities living and training at Magnolia Athletics Camp in Oloitokitok, near Kenya’s border with Tanzania.

The camp provides full scholarships covering education, accommodation, meals, athletics training and safeguarding support.

For many of the girls, athletics is not only about competition. It has become a pathway to education, confidence and opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach.

The girls’ journey comes as they mark the International Day for Women and Girls of African Descent on July 25, a day that recognises the contributions, resilience and experiences of women and girls of African descent while highlighting the need to address discrimination and inequality.

For girls growing up in marginalised communities, access to education, safe spaces and opportunities can be a powerful tool for breaking cycles of poverty and exclusion.

Coach Andrew Lesuuda says Magnolia was created not only to identify talented runners but also to give girls a safe environment where they can develop academically and personally.

“When we started Magnolia Athletics Camp, our vision was not only to identify talented runners. We wanted to create an environment where girls could discover their potential, stay in school and believe that they can achieve more in life,” Lesuuda says.

“Athletics gives them an opportunity to dream, but education gives them the foundation to build a future beyond sport.”

Sports Against Early Marriage and FGM

Many of the girls joining Magnolia come from communities where opportunities for girls remain limited and where some continue to face risks linked to female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage.

According to UNICEF, more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM. The United Nations says progress towards ending the practice remains too slow to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of eliminating FGM and child marriage by 2030.

Kenya outlawed FGM in 2011 and has made progress through legislation and awareness campaigns, but the practice continues in some communities, particularly among sections of pastoralist populations.

The struggles facing girls in vulnerable communities are part of a wider global challenge.

Sarah Hendriks, a UN Women spokesperson, in a recent press conference said no country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men, leaving millions of girls exposed to harmful practices and unequal opportunities.

“No country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men. More than half of the world’s countries do not actually define rape by law on the basis of consent. Nearly three-quarters — 74% of the world’s countries — still allow child marriage by law, allowing girls to be married as children,” Hendriks said.

At Magnolia, athletics has become a tool for changing that reality by keeping girls in school and giving them opportunities beyond traditional expectations.

A Second Chance Through Running

Before joining Magnolia, Sembeyo feared her education could end early and that she might face an early marriage.

Today, she believes the camp has transformed her future.

“Had it not been for Magnolia Athletics Camp, I believe my life would have been very different. I was at risk of an early and forced marriage, but coming here gave me the chance to stay in school, train and dream about a better future. Today, I’m happy because I know my life has a direction,” she says.

Her daily routine starts before sunrise with training, followed by school and another athletics session in the afternoon before homework in the evening.

“Every morning when I train, I remind myself why I’m doing it. I know every session brings me closer to my dream and gives me another opportunity to change my family’s life,” she says.

When Climate Change Threatens Dreams

Sembeyo is joined at Magnolia by Jeska Lenawatop, a 1,500-metre runner from Lkuroto village in Samburu County, a pastoralist region in northern Kenya.

Before joining the camp, Jeska’s life revolved around helping her family care for goats and sheep, the main source of livelihood for many pastoral households.

But recurring droughts have devastated livestock and deepened economic hardship for communities that depend on animals for survival.

“Before Magnolia, my life was mainly about grazing goats and sheep. With droughts destroying livestock, our family’s main source of income, I had little hope for the future. This camp gave me a chance to stay in school and pursue my dreams,” Jeska says.

Through athletics and education, Jeska now sees a future beyond the challenges facing her community.

Building Confidence Through Education

Another athlete benefiting from Magnolia is Felister Naimutie, a 400 m and 800 m runner from Lolgorian village in Kilgoris.

She says drought and limited opportunities affected many girls growing up in her community.

“Growing up, I saw how drought affected our families and made life difficult. Many girls had few choices beyond pastoral duties and early marriage. Magnolia gave me hope through education and athletics,” Felister says.

For her, the camp represents more than a training facility. It is a place where she can continue learning while pursuing her sporting ambitions.

Beyond the Finish Line

Barnaba Korir, Athletics Kenya’s Youth Development Director, says community-based programmes, such as Magnolia, complement national efforts to identify young talent while ensuring athletes remain in school.

He says sport can build confidence, leadership and opportunities for young people.

At Magnolia, parents, teachers, community leaders and anti-FGM advocates also engage with families to promote girls’ education and challenge harmful practices.

As another training session ends beneath Mount Kilimanjaro, the girls jog back to camp laughing and encouraging one another.

For Sembeyo, the finish line is no longer defined only by medals.

Her selection to represent Kenya at the World Athletics Under-20 Championships has strengthened her belief that athletics can transform not only her life but also those of her family.

“Being selected to represent Kenya at the World Under-20 Championships means everything to me. It’s proof that hard work pays off, and I believe it is opening opportunities that can change my life. I want to make my family proud and show other girls that they should never give up on their dreams,” she says.

One day, she hopes to stand on an international podium wearing Kenya’s colours.

But her greatest ambition goes beyond medals.

“I want girls from communities like mine to know that education and sport can change their lives. If someone believes in you and gives you an opportunity, you can achieve your dreams. My dream is not only to win medals for Kenya but also to make sure my mother and my siblings have a better life,” Sembeyo says.

Perhaps Magnolia’s greatest achievement will not be measured by medals but by the number of girls who leave the camp with education, confidence and the freedom to choose the futures they want.

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Ammar Mohammed Mahmoud Mohammed, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of the Sudan to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting that heard reports of the Secretary-General on Sudan. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2026 (IPS)

In the three years since the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War, the humanitarian crisis has deteriorated significantly, with the United Nations underscoring a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law among warring parties. This includes the deliberate targeting of civilians in residential areas, widespread sexual violence, and attacks on critical infrastructure that have hindered aid efforts and pushed communities to the brink of collapse. To manage rising military expenses, the warring parties have increasingly relied on the exploitation of trade routes and territories, prompting humanitarian experts to express concern about a persistent, self-sustaining “war economy.”

“Sudan’s vast wealth of natural resources should benefit its people. Distressingly, what we are seeing today is anything but that. In fact, this wealth is only serving to undermine human rights and drive conflict, bringing pain and suffering on an enormous scale,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. “This war economy must be disrupted, and the international community must pay much closer attention to the commodities and trade routes that help keep it alive.”

On July 15, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report titled Business and Human Rights in Conflict: Gum Arabic from Sudan, underscoring how the illicit trade of gum arabic is being exploited to fund the violent activities of both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Beyond gum arabic, the report shows that warring parties are generating massive revenues from gold, livestock, and other commodities by seizing control of local extraction, transport, and trade routes.

Historically, gum arabic has been a critical economic staple for Sudan, serving as a key ingredient in food, drinks, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals around the world. Sourced from the bark and branches of the acacia tree, gum arabic acts as a lifeline for over five million people in Sudan and remains deeply embedded in local rural communities.

Before the eruption of hostilities in 2023, Sudan’s gum arabic trade accounted for roughly 70 to 80 percent of the global crude gum arabic exports, with annual exports reaching as high as USD $183 million. Today, the vast majority of acacia forests in Sudan—which form the country’s “gum arabic belt”—are located in regions that are largely under RSF and SAF control, such as Kordofan and Darfur.

The report found that rural communities relying on gum arabic for financial stability have faced numerous protection risks and severe human rights abuses—including looting, extortion, and arbitrary detention. This further compounds the struggles of their daily lives as they face shrinking access to basic services, such as food, clean water, education, and healthcare.

Traders working along corridors stretching through RSF-controlled sections of Darfur and Kordofan have experienced confiscation of goods, excessive taxation, and violence. Additionally, the report notes that considerable quantities of gum arabic have been redirected by the RSF from West Kordofan and Darfur to Souq al-Na‘am, South Sudan, Juba, Chad, Cameroon, and Kenya. Furthermore, the UN has reported that lootings of gum arabic conducted by the RSF are often used as a form of compensation rather than traditional salaries, with roughly 3,700 tonnes looted between January and June of 2024.

OHCHR noted that gold is also a primary driver of Sudan’s war economy, being considered “the most financially significant commodity in export terms”, as well as a major source of revenue for the RSF and SAF. Figures from the Central Bank of Sudan and the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company show that in 2024, roughly 65 tonnes of gold were produced in SAF-controlled areas, including 28 tonnes that were exported through Port Sudan. This generated approximately USD $1.6 billion in revenue, contributing to 48.5 percent of the nation’s annual exports.

Despite gold production climbing to 70 tonnes in 2025, considerable portions of the gross output have been smuggled outside of the country. According to the report, in 2024, only 52 percent of the annual gold exports were passed through formal export channels. Additionally, RSF-affiliated economic entities continue to extract and trade gold from Darfur and Kordofan, with the RSF seizing over 1.3 tonnes of unrefined gold early in the conflict.

“Gold is the most important and decisive financial driver, while gum arabic provides supporting liquidity and demonstrates how the war has extended into agricultural commodities and global trade routes,” said Dr Abdelmonem Mukhtar, Executive Director of the Centre for Evidence and Data-Based Policy. “If it is established that a supply chain contributes directly or indirectly to financing parties to the conflict, regulatory, civil or ethical responsibilities may arise, in addition to reputational and commercial risks.”

Emphasizing the need for more rigid oversight, Türk called on UN member states to strengthen accountability and monitoring measures to ensure that commodity trade in Sudan does not fund violations of international humanitarian law, but rather helps to alleviate the suffering of civilians. He also urged corporations to prioritize human rights.

“Companies cannot continue business as usual when sourcing from conflict-affected value chains,” Türk said. “They should undertake heightened, conflict-sensitive human rights due diligence, including stronger scrutiny of routes, intermediaries, documentation and possible re-labelling, and ensure that affected people have access to safe and effective grievance and response mechanisms.”

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On 24 June, in Sudan, women and children displaced by the fighting in Al Obeid seek refuge in Tagat, gathering shelter for the internally displaced. Credit: UNICEF/PFP Geneva

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2026 (IPS)

Throughout 2026, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan has deteriorated significantly, prompting the United Nations (UN) to raise alarm over the escalation of human rights violations. Persistent clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue to cause mass civilian casualties, drive widespread displacement, and obstruct the delivery of life-saving aid. As a result, war-torn communities are being pushed further into catastrophe, struggling with severe shortages of essential basic services and the rapid spread of infectious disease.

According to the latest UN findings, since the outbreak of hostilities in 2024, at least 59,000 civilians have been killed due to ongoing insecurity, while an additional 14 million people have been forcibly displaced. Characterized by the UN as the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, approximately 33.7 million people are in urgent need of aid. Millions are currently residing in highly restricted areas that remain out of reach for humanitarian organizations.

The past six months alone have been particularly turbulent for war-torn communities, with daily drone strikes being reported across Sudan, with the Kordofan and Darfur localities reporting the highest numbers of child casualties. Figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that since May, there have been more than 35 child casualties recorded across North Kordofan, including at least 18 children killed and over 17 others injured. Some of these children are as young as two months old.

Repeated bombardment and artillery shelling have caused widespread destruction to civilian infrastructure, damaging or rendering non-functional homes, health facilities, schools, water systems, markets, and critical supply routes, which has severely restricted access to essential services. The UN estimates that roughly 500,000 civilians are at risk in and around the Al Obeid and wider North Kordofan regions, where even minor surges in violence could expose more children to grave protection risks, including death, injury, and displacement.

“Children are being caught in a relentless cycle of violence, displacement and deprivation,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative for Sudan. “For many children, there is no safe place left. They are being killed and injured in their homes, on the roads, in markets, and while attempting to access essential services such as education and healthcare. Children must never be a target. Their lives, rights and futures must be protected.”

The disruption of water infrastructure and the collapse of the national health system have ravaged war-torn displaced communities, particularly in North Kordofan, which has been described as the epicenter of the conflict. This has resulted in a deadly new outbreak of cholera, which has already claimed more than 100 lives.

On July 10, Dr. Shible Sahbani, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Representative to Sudan, told reporters in Geneva that there have been over 1,330 confirmed cholera cases, including 114 deaths. The true number of fatalities related to this outbreak is estimated to be much higher, with humanitarian organizations expressing fears that the outbreak could spread among hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled North Kordofan and reside in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. WHO also noted that civilians struggle with persistent outbreaks of dengue, malaria, meningitis, hepatitis E, and measles.

“We are particularly concerned about the spread [of cholera] to El-Obeid in North Kordofan, where the access is very limited and where the fragile health system is under increasing strain,” said Sahbani. “Health facilities are overwhelmed there and access to care is very, very limited.”

“We call for our partners and donors to help us to be able first to access and second to be able to send enough supplies and enough facilities in El-Obeid. But we know that the situation there is very, very bad and it’s worsening with higher risk of disease outbreaks, malnutrition, violence, including violence against women and children.”

On July 3, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that El Obeid has faced “siege-like” conditions for the past 18 months, with the area currently being under SAF control. UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, told reporters that OHCHR has documented 15 drone strikes in El Obeid and surrounding areas between June 6 and 28, leaving at least 45 civilians killed and 41 others injured. The true number of casualties is projected to be much higher.

“These attacks, and fuel shortages, have a compound impact, making it difficult for civilians to access clean water, food, transport and healthcare, and to communicate with each other and the outside world,” said Türk. “Some people are selling their belongings to finance their escape from the city. For many, the exorbitant cost of transport, and constant attacks on vehicles along exit routes, make leaving impossible.”

Furthermore, OHCHR has documented a sharp rise in human rights violations over the course of the year. According to Türk, OHCHR has recorded numerous instances of summary executions, abductions, torture, and sexual violence, particularly along routes regularly used by displaced civilians travelling across Kordofan. In El Obeid, there is a substantial risk of arbitrary arrest and detention, with the agency recording numerous cases where civilians fleeing RSF-controlled areas have been accused of collaborating with the SAF.

On June 18, Türk highlighted this surge in abuses, issuing a stark warning that an imminent offensive “risked fresh commission” of serious international crimes. He specifically noted an alarming rise in ethnically motivated attacks and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. On June 20, the UN Security Council adopted a statement in which members called for an immediate cessation of the RSF’s assault on El Obeid, as well as for all human rights violations to be thoroughly investigated and for perpetrators to be held accountable.

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Cameroon pledged to halve gender-based violence by 2026. That deadline has arrived, and the government has fallen far short. Credit: Shutterstock

By Stacey-Leigh Manuel
BLOOMFIELD, United States, Jul 9 2026 (IPS)

In Cameroon’s Far North region, Adiza, a 57-year-old woman had spent nearly three decades confined to her home by her husband. She was not allowed to leave, receive visitors, or speak with non-family members. When she disobeyed, he beat her.

Rosaline, a 44-year-old hairdresser in the southwestern region, went to work at her hair salon and found all her equipment  gone. Her husband of 16 years had sold everything and cancelled the lease without consulting her. He also sold  land they had jointly acquired.

These stories are not unique. While some laws exist to protect women, serious legal gaps and weak enforcement leave many women without protection.

A new Human Rights Watch new report, I Live in Constant Peril, examines the prevalence and dynamics of violence against women, particularly domestic violence, how it manifests as economic violence, and the structural discrimination that enables it.

Government awareness campaigns and rhetoric  are not enough. The government has failed to reform discriminatory laws, strengthen government institutions to prevent violence, or invest in public services that could help women escape abuse.

A law against domestic violence is essential but alone will not end that violence as long as the broader legal framework continues to grant husbands authority over their wives and treats men as the default owners of marital property.

The most recent official data was collected in 2018, but found that nearly 4 in 10 women and girls in Cameroon who had been in a relationship experienced physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence in their lifetime. The figure rises to 64 percent in Cameroon’s Centre Region, excluding Yaounde. In 2024 Government officials counted at least 77 women killed by current or former partners, and they believe the real number is higher. These figures do not reflect a country where violence against women is being taken seriously.

Cameroon’s Civil Code still designates husbands as the heads of household and primary administrators of marital property. Husbands have the right to decide the family’s place of residence and can stop their wives from seeking employment or running a business in the interest of the family.

In cases we documented,  one  husband told his wife to quit her job and asked her employer to fire her; multiple husbands ransacked and destroyed the businesses their wives had built themselves claiming the wife didn’t obtain their permission; some confiscated their wife’s earnings, or filled  their home with relatives, depleting any profit or savings from the wife’s business.

Women in long-term consensual relationships, commonly known as “cam we stay” or “viens on reste” in Cameroon, discovered that they had no legal protections, and when those relationships ended, that they had no legal standing .

A draft Family Code has remained stalled between ministries for more than 20 years without reaching the National Assembly. Completing it is not a question of complexity but of political will.

Women who report abuse encounter a fragmented system. Poor coordination between government agencies, police, courts and social services creates additional barriers to protection and justice.

Instead of receiving support, women are often told to reconcile, blamed for the abuse, or see cases dismissed when perpetrators have influence. Many stop reporting because they believe doing so will only increase the violence.

Leaving an abusive relationship is far harder for women who are economically dependent on their husbands. Most women in Cameroon work in the informal economy, often in low paid and insecure jobs without contracts and employment protections, while also carrying the bulk of unpaid care and household work. Social security coverage is extremely limited.

This lack of protection has serious consequences. Cameroon inaugurated its first One-Stop Centre for survivors of violence in Yaounde in 2025, but one center is insufficient.  Legal aid also remains difficult to access because of  lack of information, bureaucracy and delays, corruption risks, leaving many women without a safe path out of abuse.

Over the last 15 years, Cameroon has touted a commitment to reduce gender-based violence, with a 2022 target to cut it in half by 2026. That deadline is now. The government has not come close.

Cameroon pledged to halve gender-based violence by 2026. That deadline has arrived, and the government has fallen far short. It should urgently reform discriminatory laws, adopt the Family Code, establish a coordinated national response to domestic violence, and ensure women can access the services they need to live safely and independently.

Stacey-Leigh Manuel is deputy women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch

Clarke A survivor of sexual violence covers her face with her hands in a camp for displaced people in Tawila, North Darfur. Credit: UNOCHA/Giles

By Mariya Salim
DELHI, India, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

Three years ago, during a mission to the Central African Republic from United Nations Headquarters, I met a woman whose story has remained with me ever since. She had survived rape during the conflict. Yet what stayed with her most was not only the violence she had suffered, but the stigma that followed it. When she returned home, her family refused to take her back. In a society where survivors of sexual violence are too often burdened with shame that rightfully belongs to perpetrators, she found herself isolated and struggling to rebuild her life. In that moment, it became painfully clear that for survivors, the violence does not end when the assault ends, it continues through stigma, exclusion, and the resulting silence for most.

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) does not end when the act itself ends. Its consequences ripple through families, communities, and generations and that is precisely why more needs to be done to not just address it but prevent it from happening in the first place.

As the world marked the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict on 19 June, (The day marks the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008), which condemned sexual violence in conflict and recognized its impact on peace and security), I found myself reflecting on the many survivors whose stories I have encountered throughout my career. I witnessed firsthand the devastating and enduring impact of these crimes, sometimes documenting and analysing the many cases sent to us by colleagues on the field and sometimes while interacting with the survivors first hand. At a moment when wars dominate global headlines, from Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, ignoring CRSV means ignoring one of war’s most enduring and devastating consequences.

Today, the issue is more urgent than ever. Civilians continue to bear the heaviest burden of conflict, and among the most devastating consequences of conflict is sexual violence. According to the United Nations Secretary-General’s 2026 Report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, nearly 9,800 cases were verified globally in 2025, more than double the number documented the previous year. Yet even these alarming figures represent only a fraction of the actual scale of violations, given the barriers to reporting, including stigma, insecurity, fear of retaliation, and limited access to services. “The figures contained in this report should be understood not as the full picture, but as an indication of a much broader pattern of violations that remain largely unseen and underreported.” said Special Representative to the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten.

From Sudan and South Sudan to Haiti, Ukraine, and Myanmar, recent UN reporting shows that conflict-related sexual violence continues to affect communities across the globe, reminding us that it remains one of the most enduring and devastating consequences of armed conflict.

CRSV is not an inevitable consequence of war; it is often a deliberate act used to terrorize communities, assert power, and deepen divisions. Its impact extends well beyond the immediate violation. For many survivors, the trauma is compounded by stigma, rejection from family members, exclusion from community life, loss of livelihoods, interrupted education, and limited access to justice and support services. The consequences can endure long after the conflict itself has faded from public attention.

In South Sudan, I documented stories of women and adolescent girls who had survived gang rape while collecting firewood, water or travelling to markets. I listened to survivors who feared reporting violations because they worried about being ostracized by their communities and feared retaliation by their attackers who ranged from soldiers to armed militia. I encountered families struggling to support children born out of rape while facing stigma and economic hardship.

Although women and girls bear the overwhelming burden of conflict-related sexual violence, my work also exposed me to the experiences of men and boys who had endured similar violations. Many carried their trauma in silence, reluctant to come forward because of stigma, fear, and societal expectations surrounding masculinity. As a result, their experiences are frequently overlooked, even as they grapple with profound physical and psychological consequences.

In conflict zones such as South Sudan, local civil society organisations continue to play a critical role in supporting survivors despite significant resource and safety constraints. These organisations often serve as the first and sometimes only point of contact for survivors seeking assistance. They provide psychosocial support, referrals to healthcare, legal aid, community awareness programmes, and safe spaces for healing. Yet the scale of need far exceeds available resources.

As Rev. John Ngbapia Bakiri, Executive Director of Rural Development Action Aid (RDAA), explains:

“The biggest challenge we face in dealing with Survivors of CRSV in South Sudan is the limited scope and resources of the intervention relative to the scale of need. Many CRSV Survivors remain unreached, several highly affected communities excluded, and the specific needs of children born out of rape are not fully integrated into the response. These children continue to face stigma, protection risks, and limited access to essential services, compounding the vulnerability of survivor households.”

Addressing conflict-related sexual violence therefore requires moving beyond emergency response and looking at prevention with a survivor centred approach. It requires sustained investment in healthcare, psychosocial support, education, livelihoods, legal assistance, awareness building and social reintegration. It requires supporting local organisations that remain embedded within communities long after international attention has shifted elsewhere. It also involves very importantly engaging with the government including the implementation of national action plans, criminalization of conflict-related sexual violence in domestic legislation, and meaningful accountability for perpetrators regardless of rank or affiliation.

Despite decades of advocacy and normative progress, accountability remains elusive in many contexts. Survivors continue to face significant barriers in accessing justice and perpetrators often operating with impunity is common. With peace processes and political negotiations frequently overlooking the experiences and priorities of survivors, funding for survivor-centred services remains inadequate despite growing needs. At a time when violence and instability are rising across the world, we can no longer afford to relegate conflict-related sexual violence to the margins of policy and peacebuilding efforts. Its consequences are profound and enduring, leaving scars not only on survivors but also on the communities and societies struggling to rebuild in its aftermath.

The International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict offers an important moment for reflection. But remembrance alone is not enough. What survivors deserve is justice, protection, meaningful support, and genuine participation in shaping the policies and responses that affect them with a seat at the decision making table. Their stories are not simply testimonies of suffering, they are calls to action.

Mariya Salim is co-founder of Zariya. She is a Human Rights activist and an international SGBV expert currently based in Delhi India. She has served as a Women Protection Adviser with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and was part of the United Nations team working on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence at UN Headquarters in New York.

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Sephora*, an 18-year-old mother of two, holds her baby girl at the Karibuni wa Mama Clinic supported by SOFEPADI in Bunia, Ituri province, DR Congo, on 25 November 2025. Originally from a remote village, she fled when armed clashes erupted in 2023. Credit: UNICEF / Mirindi Johnson

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2026 (IPS)

A record number of children were subject to grave violations by parties to armed conflicts, the highest since the UN mandate for children and armed conflict (CAAC) was established in 1996.

In the Secretary-General’s annual report, UN-verified sources confirmed 35,558 violations committed against children during armed conflicts. This is the fourth year in a row that incidents have increased from years.

The data in the report is based on instances occurring in and verified in 2025. At least 24,174 children were directly affected or had their rights violated, through killing and maiming, forced recruitment, abduction, sexual violence, and denial of humanitarian assistance. At least 1 in 3 victims were girls. The killing of children increased by 34 percent compared to incidents from 2024, totaling to 14,224 children killed or maimed. 5129 children were abducted, and there were at least 8322 instances of denial of humanitarian assistance. 6607 children were recruited or used by armed groups, and a total of 1667 children were detained for their actual or alleged connection to armed groups.

For the first time since the CAAC mandate was created, government forces were responsible for the highest number of grave violations. In addition to the killing and maiming of children, government forces were largely responsible for the destruction or military use of schools and hospitals, and the denial of humanitarian access. This sense of impunity is further amplified by hostilities, and in the increasing use of wide-area explosive weapons and in densely populated areas, resulting in more civilian casualties. The use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons systems has also transformed.

The states responsible for the highest number of violations included Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Israeli forces were responsible for nearly one-third of the grave violations in the report — 12,455. In the DRC, 4,114 grave violations against children were committed, including 519 deaths and 1067 abductions.

Vanessa Frazier, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, at the release of the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict in 2025. Credit: IPS / Naureen Hossain

Under-Secretary-General Vanessa Frazier, the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, warned that the frequency — and intensity — of violations against children reflect a growing disdain for international law and the protected rights of children.

“2025 was without a doubt one of the darkest chapters for child protection since monitoring began,” said Frazier. “When States, on whom the obligation to protect children falls, instead contribute to their suffering, it signals the deeper erosion of respect for international law. The principles of humanity, distinction, proportionality, and necessity must be restored — without exception.”

Frazier told reporters on June 18 that the report is meant to be a “tool of accountability”. It should be used by member states to inform their own actions to take the appropriate steps needed to protect children in armed conflict. In the case of countries named in the report with ongoing situations, this is also an opportunity for them to enter into agreements to reduce and prevent further violations during conflict between now and the following year.

Frazier confirmed that early drafts of the report were shared with these countries back in March, and the countries had at least one month to present their own evidence to be corroborated with the UN-verified data. She added that open dialogue between her office and the countries is encouraged, if those countries choose to engage in the first place.

The report calls on member states to uphold international law to protect civilians, especially children, during times of conflict, through upholding their commitments to existing peace and security agreements. Parties to conflicts are also called on to develop and implement action plans with the UN, and to grant the UN access to conduct thorough monitoring and reporting of grave violations against children.

The report also calls on technology and social media companies to take concrete measures to prevent their platforms from being used by armed groups to recruit and exploit children, and to cooperate with accountability and child protection mechanisms. The misuse of digital technology can have adverse effects on children’s wellbeing even in peaceful contexts. Without sufficient legal guardrails and proper monitoring, children are more likely to be exposed to misinformation and recruitment content.

A senior UN official told Inter Press Service that online recruitment is a pervasive issue across multiple conflict areas, and that more resources need to be mobilized to create responsibility. The official confirmed that Frazier and her office were in contact with lawmakers from the European Union to determine how existing frameworks like the Digital Services Act could protect children. The office is also working with TikTok in Colombia to implement strategies to prevent the recruitment and use of children during conflict.

Frazier called on the state actors to adopt action plans to protect and reintegrate children formerly associated with armed groups. In 2025, 13,112 children received protection and reintegration support with the help of other UN agencies like UNICEF and its partners. This requires funding support from donors and state parties as much as it requires political will. Further investments into accountability and prevention measures among parties in conflicts are also needed, through partnerships with the UN, governments and parties to conflicts.

Before she was the Secretary-General’s Special Representative (SRSG) for Children and Armed Conflict, Frazier was the Permanent Representative of Malta to the UN during its term in the Security Council from 2023-2024. Both in her capacity as SRSG and as a member of the Security Council, Frazier has visited conflict sites and spoken with children directly impacted. She reflected that it was particularly aggravating to see state actors in the list of perpetrators in the report, given that state actors, who are also UN member states, are supposed to be the ones abiding by the rule of law and protecting children. “It’s not acceptable that there are nine state actors listed, irrespective of who they are and how bad they are,” said Frazier.

What was most striking to her is that many of these incidents that resulted in so many child casualties could have been avoided. State actors seem to make the conscious, operational decision to target factories manufacturing weapons or enemy strongholds, regardless of whether civilian infrastructures like schools are nearby and would get caught in the radius. Even if those infrastructures are not the intended target, state actors will follow through with the attacks, which show a disregard for international humanitarian law and a lack of concern for the consequences of civilian casualties. It is children who are suffering the consequences of state actors’ decisions, Frazier said.

“I think for state actors it is worse than non-state actors, because this mandate was originally created to target armed groups and non-state actors; ones who work outside of the law. We cannot have state actors who are supposed to work within the reams of the law, now working outside the reams of the law. That should not be something that is acceptable.”

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Elongo, 12, washes her hands at Epo‑Ville Primary School in Bunia, Ituri Province, DR Congo, on 22 May 2026. She had just taken part in a handwashing demonstration led by UNICEF WASH Officer Ciza Nyalundja. Credit: UNICEF/Carmel Ndomba Mbikayi

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, May 26 2026 (IPS)

Since May 16, there has been a significant increase in the number of laboratory-confirmed and suspected Ebola cases reported across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), primarily in Ituri Province, with additional unrelated cases identified in Kampala, Uganda. Although the outbreak has remained largely confined to that region, it has been heavily linked to areas affected by insecurity, civilian displacement, and mining-related migration, raising concerns among global health experts that the outbreak could spread without effective monitoring and response efforts.

As of May 17, the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that the Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo virus in the DRC and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued health alerts to healthcare workers and travelers regarding the spread in the region. Current projections of the virus spreading to other continents remain low at this time, with WHO stating that the outbreak does not meet the criteria of a pandemic, as defined in the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR).

“We are now revising our risk assessment to very high at the national level, high at the regional level, and low at the global level,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, on May 22 at a United Nations (UN) press briefing in Geneva, noting that there have been 82 confirmed Ebola cases and seven deaths in the DRC. However, these figures are expected to be far higher, with nearly 750 suspected cases and 177 reported suspected deaths.

Two additional confirmed cases linked with travel from the DRC have also been reported in Uganda, one of which ended in death. Furthermore, two American nationals have been transferred to Europe for treatment after being suspected of contracting the virus following prolonged “high-risk contact.”

Response efforts have been largely limited as a result of widespread civilian displacement and prolonged conflict. On May 21, the UN reported that a hospital in the Ituri province was set on fire by angry relatives after the local police refused to release the body of an infected individual to the family due to concerns of contamination.

Additionally, the outbreak has been most pronounced in the Ituri and North Kivu provinces, which have historically been the center of armed conflict and humanitarian suffering in the DRC. Over the past few months alone, there have been more than 100,000 civilians displaced in this region as a direct result of violence, which has severely constrained humanitarian response efforts.

“These are some of the most difficult operating environments in the world for our life-saving work,” said Tom Fletcher, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, in a statement shared to X. “We face conflict and high population movement. We are working to secure safe and sustained access for frontline responders, including to areas controlled by armed groups. It is essential that there is no obstruction to our response. We must have access to all routes — air, land, and water — across the affected areas.”

According to Ghebreyesus, approximately four million people are in dire need of humanitarian intervention, two million are displaced, and ten million are facing acute food insecurity. Women will be disproportionately affected, as they often serve in caregiving roles, domestic labour, and frontline services, all of which increase their risk of infection. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable, while quarantine measures have been linked with rising rates of gender based violence.

These risks have been exacerbated by the collapse of health systems in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces, where needs are most dire. In 2025, WHO recorded more than 1.5 million people across these provinces who lost access to primary healthcare facilities. Approximately 85 percent of healthcare centers face critical drug shortages.

“Even if people are sick, they may be suspected cases, they cannot access health services, and therefore they cannot be detected, they cannot be diagnosed,” said Teresa Zakaria, WHO’s Unit Head of Humanitarian Operations. “Within the outbreak response as well, we need to really make sure that essential health services for everyone in the two provinces are safeguarded, especially for those who have been forcibly displaced and extremely vulnerable.”

Humanitarian experts have stressed that restoring the public’s confidence in agencies’ capability to contain the outbreak will be crucial moving forward. Following the 2013-2016 Western Africa Ebola epidemic, many communities are still carrying trauma and have harbored a deep distrust in the humanitarian response.

Many residents across the region continue to seek treatment, while others believe that Ebola is “fabricated,” according to Gabriela Arenas of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

“They remember the fear. They remember the rumours spreading to villages. They remember neighbours disappearing into treatment centres,” said Arenas. “During an Ebola outbreak, trust and community acceptance can mean the difference between containment and wider transmission.”

Supplies handed over by UNICEF Chief Field Office Ibrahim Abdi Shire hands over supplies to the Provincial Health Directorate in Bukavu, South Kivu Province, DR Congo, on 20 May 2026. Credit: UNICEF/Christian Kalengera

On May 22, Fletcher announced that up to $60 million USD from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund will be allocated to support containment, treatment, and monitoring efforts in DRC and surrounding countries. WHO also announced that it has deployed 22 international staff to provide direct frontline assistance and released $3.9 million USD from its contingency fund. The agency, in collaboration with Africa’s CDC, has established a continental incident management team to support frontline responders and protect vulnerable communities.

“We are applying lessons from previous outbreaks,” said Fletcher. “Containment depends on fast, coordinated action at the community level. We need strong communication with governments and effective early warning and detection systems across affected countries. Community trust is essential: we will continue delivering wider humanitarian support to people affected, engage closely with them to understand their needs, preposition supplies where possible, and avoid militarised delivery of support.”

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Deborah Nyokabi speaking at the 81st African Commission on Human & Peoples' Rights

By Deborah Nyokabi
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The theme of Africa Day 2026, “63 years of unity, integration and development,” offers a stark reminder of the gap that often exists between rhetoric and reality. While commendable regional legal frameworks have advanced legal protections for millions of women and girls, injustice remains written into the fabric of national family laws in many African countries, entrenching gender inequality in the home.

Such is the reality for the young woman in Kampala whose marriage was never legally registered and who, in the eyes of the State, does not exist as a wife.

For the woman in Lagos whose husband took their children after a divorce she did not want, and the law backed him.

For the Muslim widow in Nairobi who cannot inherit the home she shared with her husband for thirty years because property passes to his male relatives.

How the global anti-rights movement is targeting women’s rights in Africa

African countries have made laudable advances in legal rights for women and girls, but many laws governing marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance remain stubbornly unequal.

Deborah Nyokabi

Reform remains slow, uneven, and increasingly obstructed by a coordinated anti-rights movement that includes transnational ultra-conservative Christian organisations, populist political actors from the Global North, billionaire-funded conservative foundations, and right-wing think tanks and legal advocacy groups. They have found fertile ground in Africa, forging alliances with conservative organisations, religious leaders, and politicians who promote illiberal agendas.

Operating in plain sight and dressed in the language of culture, tradition, and sovereignty, these groups target parliaments, constitutional drafting processes, and regional human rights bodies. They draft model legislation, deploy strategic litigation, lobby policymakers, and cultivate relationships with heads of state and cabinet ministers.

They infiltrate international and regional human rights spaces to weaken protections, and run expensive communications campaigns while channeling cross-border funding to local organisations to portray coordinated efforts as grassroots.

Anti-rights groups seeking to reshape African policy

At the second Pan-African Conference on Family Values, held in Nairobi in May 2025, a declaration was adopted calling the family “not a flexible or negotiable construct” and committing to translate their discriminative doctrine into enforceable laws and regional partnerships. High-ranking Kenyan government officials delivered the opening and closing addresses.

The conference was co-sponsored by Family Watch International, C-Fam, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, all of whom served on the advisory committee of Project 2025, an initiative by the US-based Heritage Foundation seeking to roll back reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and diversity initiatives. These are not fringe actors. They are well-funded, politically connected, and pushing into the mainstream.

These groups have also drafted a proposed African Charter on Family, Sovereignty, and Values, which undermines gender equality by rejecting universal definitions of gender, sexuality, and sexual and reproductive health rights. Tabled at an inter-parliamentary conference in Entebbe in 2025, it calls for withdrawal from international human rights instruments and seeks to shield states from obligations under the Maputo Protocol, the African Union’s legally-binding women’s rights treaty.

Applications for observer status at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights from organisations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom signal an intent to infiltrate the very bodies designed to hold States accountable to their obligation to ensure equality, including in the family.

Harmful bills pass fast while equality bills stall

One of the most devastating patterns is the speed at which homophobic ‘family protection’ legislation moves, while paralysis grips laws to advance gender equality. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed in under three months. In Ghana, lawmakers are promoting the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill; in Kenya, political support for the Family Protection Bill is growing. Backed by far-right organisations in the US, these bills seek to criminalise sexual minorities and promote a rigid, exclusionary vision of the family centred on heterosexual marriage and conservative social structures.

Meanwhile, family law reform bills that would give women equal rights in marriage, divorce, and custody have stalled for decades in Uganda, Cameroon, and Ghana. The contrast is not coincidental. The same movement blocking equality for women and girls in family laws is the one pushing legislation against LGBTQI+ people. It uses the same language: family values, cultural integrity, sovereignty, national cohesion. But when you trace the money and the actors, the strategy becomes clear. The goal is not to protect the family. It is to protect the patriarchy within it.

How African civil society and coalitions are fighting back

None of this goes unanswered.

When the Pan-African Conference on Family Values convened in Nairobi, over twenty Kenyan human rights organisations petitioned for the venue to refuse to host it. Billboards celebrating diverse families lined the road from the airport. Activists disrupted the social media narrative and organised in the streets.

Strategic litigation has compelled the government to reinstate safe abortion guidelines in Kenya. International coalitions, including African women, have pushed back against anti-rights infiltration at the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. Survivors, lawyers, activists, and advocates are refusing to cede ground.

Working in coalitions is one of the most powerful tools available to those defending gender equality. The anti-rights movement succeeds in part because it is coordinated across borders, sectors, and institutions. The response must be equally organised. Equality Now’s coalition work is grounded in this understanding. Through the Africa Family Law Network, we join with civil society organisations, legal networks, faith communities, survivor advocates, and parliamentarians to build and sustain a stronger common front.

What African governments must do to reform family laws

This year’s Africa Day should serve as a call to action to prioritise family law reform. We are at a perilous moment of global regression in women’s rights, where hard-won legal safeguards are being deliberately dismantled. Discriminatory family law sits at the heart of that regression. The ask is not complicated. The political will is what is missing. We stand ready to work with you to change that:

To the African Union: Advocate for the universal ratification and implementation of the Maputo Protocol, a floor, not a ceiling. Push for lifting of reservations on equality in marriage, family, and reproductive rights by member states. Resist attempts to water down its provisions through model reservations crafted by anti-rights legal networks.

To African parliaments and parliamentarians: Reform discriminatory laws on marriage registration, equal divorce rights, child custody, and inheritance that have been stalled for too long. Every year of inaction is a year of harm. Do not allow parliaments to be used as platforms for movements that entrench inequality in the family under the disguise of protecting it.

To African governments: Enforce the Maputo Protocol, and ratify if not already undertaken. Conduct awareness-raising campaigns on family law rights. Invest in legal aid that reaches women in rural communities and informal settlements. Allocate sufficient budgets to gender equality and family law reform. Recognise unpaid care work. National family protection policies must protect all family members, not only those who fit a narrow ideological template.

To civil society, lawyers, journalists, and advocates: Build and sustain coalitions across borders. Expose the funding and actors behind anti-rights campaigns. Tell the stories of the women these laws fail. Make the abstract concrete. Keep going.

“Until family laws are equal, there is no equality in African society.”

This Africa Day, let us be clear about what we are celebrating, and honest about what still needs to change.

Deborah Nyokabi is a Legal Advisor on Legal Equality at Equality Now, a global human rights organisation dedicated to ending discrimination against all women and girls. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Excerpt:

Credit: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, May 22 2026 (IPS)

Narges Mohammadi, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights activism in Iran, has been allowed to go home. After guards found her unconscious in her cell, the apparent victim of a heart attack, she was granted temporary release from prison and transferred to a hospital. However, she still faces the threat of being taken back to jail once her condition has improved.

Mohammadi has been repeatedly imprisoned for criticising the theocratic regime, demanding women’s rights, advocating for prison reform and campaigning against the death penalty. Over her lifetime she’s been sentenced to a total of 44 years. She’s already spent more than a decade behind bars, including 161 days in solitary confinement, and has also been sentenced to 154 lashes. In February she was handed a further seven-and-a-half-year sentence. From prison – where she experienced cardiac and blood pressure problems and severe weight loss – she has documented systematic rights violations against political prisoners, including sexual and physical abuse of women detainees, torture and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Mohammadi’s case is one among many. While her ordeal has rightly drawn international attention, others more distant from the spotlight are in danger. Three more women human rights activists – Pakhshan Azizi, Sharifeh Mohammadi and Varisheh Moradi – are on death row at imminent risk of execution. The dangers they and countless others face have grown sharply since the current war began.

Repression tightens

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he wants regime change in Iran. On 1 March, an Israeli strike killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But if the intention was to topple the regime, it didn’t happen. Iran’s ruling theocratic structures run deep, with multiple layers of planned succession. Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, injured in the same attack, was quickly named his replacement, despite Iran’s official ideology formally rejecting hereditary succession.

While clerical leaders have been killed, Iran’s coercive apparatus has gained in its day-to-day power, hardening the theocracy into something closer to a military dictatorship, with the Basij, the paramilitary volunteer force long deployed to crush public dissent, now front and centre.

Israeli and US hopes that Iranians would rise up against the regime have been disappointed. Iran has seen successive mass protest waves, each crushed with large-scale lethal violence. They include the Green Movement that demanded democracy in 2009 and 2010 and the Woman, Life, Freedom protests that demanded women’s rights in 2022 and 2023. The latest uprising came in December 2025 and January 2026, triggered by economic collapse, forging a movement that united broad sections of society to demand an end to the theocratic regime. The state suppressed it with shocking brutality, killing thousands and detaining tens of thousands.

By February, the uprising had been crushed. The Israeli-US intervention was unlikely to reignite a meaningful mass protest movement. If anything, for some Iranians the war has stoked patriotism and more intense enmity towards Israel and the USA. The anticipated revolt simply hasn’t happened.

Much of Iran’s vast diaspora has rallied in support of the war as a means of toppling the regime. But while the diaspora is united in demanding change, its array of ethnic minority organisations, Islamist factions, leftists, monarchists and republicans is bitterly divided over what should come next. Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah, enjoys some support but others are wary about monarchical nostalgia and his close ties to Israel and the USA. The most credible potential unifying figures inside Iran are imprisoned or otherwise silenced.

Instead of losing control, the regime has tightened its repression. Even as Iran’s leaders wage a social media propaganda war abroad, at home they’ve imposed a near-total internet shutdown, including a block on VPN services. The blackout has caused immense economic harm, disrupting businesses and financial transactions and hitting women the hardest. This comes on top of the economic effects of the current US blockade of Iranian ports, sending inflation and unemployment soaring.

Under the cover of war and the internet shutdown, the government has accelerated executions of political prisoners. While precise figures are hard to get, rights groups report close to 200 executions so far this year, most preceded by prolonged torture to extract false confessions. Secret hangings are reportedly being carried out on an almost daily basis. Among those killed are people detained during the January protests. On 4 May, it was reported that three people arrested at protests on 8 and 9 January – Ebrahim Dolatabadinejad, Mohammadreza Miri and Mehdi Rasouli – had been hanged. For families, the suffering doesn’t end there, as authorities reportedly refuse to return bodies and pressure relatives to stay silent.

Local priorities

Democracy and human rights in Iran depend on the regime’s departure. But the latest war isn’t about any of this. For Netanyahu, with an election impending and anger remaining at his corruption charges and Israel’s security failures around the 7 October Hamas attacks, permanent warfare is a political strategy. Donald Trump’s many social media announcements provide little clue of what motivates a president who promised not to mire the USA in foreign wars, but distraction from low popularity ratings and his many appearances in the Epstein files may be a factor.

This war isn’t the way to achieve change. The regime appears entrenched and capable of surviving a longer conflict. Any peace deal would leave it intact, which its rulers would treat as a victory.

Real change will come when protests can grow into a mass movement large enough to withstand the lethal repression the state will inevitably deploy. That can only happen with sustained support that respects the autonomy of local civil society leaders and strengthens their capacity. The immediate priorities must be to protect credible local sources of information amid the information blackout and ensure the safety and security of Iran’s democracy and human rights activists.

Above all, states must press the Iranian government to halt executions and release everyone detained for speaking out, protesting and demanding change, beginning with Narges Mohammadi. Temporary medical release is nowhere near enough. The Iranian regime must let her be free.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, 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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Credit: Phil Nijhuis/ANP via AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Apr 27 2026 (IPS)

Yasmin Ullah, from Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority, is determined to see justice. On 13 April, she filed a complaint alleging genocide against Myanmar’s president, Min Aung Hlaing, to Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office. Min Aung Hlaing led the 2021 coup that ousted a democratically elected government and this month was named president following a sham election held amid intense repression, rubber stamping the army’s continuing grip on power. However secure he appears in his position, Yasmin Ullah’s legal action offers hope his impunity may not be guaranteed.

The complaint accuses Min Aung Hlaing of genocide against Rohingya people, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group denied citizenship despite being long established in Myanmar. He’s accused of being responsible for the burning of Rohingya villages, forced evictions, killings and mass rape in a 2017 military operation, during which around 24,000 Rohingya people were killed and over 700,000 forced to flee. The UN’s fact-finding mission and its Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar have extensively documented atrocities. Civil society has played a key role in gathering testimonies from survivors and preserving evidence.

The case was made possible by changes to Indonesia’s criminal code that came into effect in January. While civil society has raised concerns about revisions to other parts of the code that restrict Indonesian people’s ability to speak out and protest, this particular change stands out as a positive development, enabling people to bring charges against alleged perpetrators of atrocities in other countries under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Universal jurisdiction on the rise

Universal jurisdiction applies to crimes under international law, such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, on the grounds that these crimes are an offence against humanity as a whole and as such aren’t bound by borders.

Some states, including France and Germany, have passed laws to enable universal jurisdiction prosecutions. Many powerful states however still refuse to recognise the principle, citing national sovereignty, the long-established doctrine of immunity for heads of state and the potential for prosecutions to be politically motivated.

Yet the question of whether government leaders should be immune from prosecution has increasingly been contested. Immunity wasn’t granted when leaders of Sierra Leone and former Yugoslavia were prosecuted for crimes committed during civil wars, and the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), removed the principle of immunity where it has jurisdiction. Ironically, the Trump administration, which resists international accountability over its officials, may have contributed to further eroding the doctrine of immunity by abducting Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and placing him on trial for drug trafficking.

Universal jurisdiction cases have increased since the end of the Cold War. Belgium, Finland and Germany convicted people for their role in the Rwanda genocide. Switzerland secured the first guilty verdict for crimes committed in the Liberian civil war, while France convicted another Liberian war criminal in 2022. Germany convicted a Bosnian paramilitary soldier of genocide and, in 2021 and 2022, found two Syrian officials guilty of atrocity crimes.

Hopes of justice

Rohingya people have no hope of justice in a country that refuses even to recognise them as citizens, so diaspora civil society organisations are seeking it wherever they find opportunities. In 2025, an Argentinian court issued arrest warrants against Min Aung Hlaing and other senior Myanmar officials on crimes against humanity and genocide charges, in a case brought by a Rohingya organisation. Earlier this year, a human rights organisation filed a criminal case against the Myanmar regime in Timor-Leste. When authorities appointed a senior prosecutor to examine the case, Myanmar retaliated by expelling Timor-Leste’s ambassador.

These efforts complement proceedings in international courts. In 2024, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity, while in January, hearings began at the International Court of Justice in a case brought by the Gambian government accusing Myanmar of breaching the Genocide Convention. It isn’t a question of choosing between national jurisdictions and international courts, but rather of taking every avenue available to demand justice.

Universal jurisdiction has its limits. Those accused tend to be safe when they hold power; when states have successfully prosecuted perpetrators, it’s after they’ve lost the power that enabled their crimes. Currently, this means attempts to hold Israel’s leaders accountable for the genocide in Gaza, such as arrest warrants a Turkish court issued against 37 officials, only have symbolic value. Cases motivated by political point-scoring also risk discrediting the principle, as when a body created by Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad found an array of US officials guilty in absentia, without legal basis or consequence.

Actions under universal jurisdiction, when targeted at evident offenders, can nonetheless help build moral pressure and signal that justice may eventually come. At a time when the brutal and illegitimate Myanmar regime is buttressed by China, India and Russia, and with the USA easing its pressure in pursuit of economic benefits, it matters that other countries keep holding the line, isolating the junta and exposing its atrocities.

It matters all the more when pressure comes from Southeast Asian countries, depriving the Myanmar regime of the excuse that human rights accountability is a western imposition. Two members of the Association of Southeast Asian nations, Indonesia and Timor-Leste, have now taken action against a fellow member. But other attempts in the region have faltered. Philippine authorities declined to proceed when five survivors of atrocities filed a case in 2023, while an investigation civil society filed with Indonesia’s national human rights commission that same year, alleging that Indonesian companies were supplying military equipment to Myanmar, has so far seen no progress.

As 2026 president of the UN Human Rights Council, Indonesia is uniquely placed to take the lead in the pursuit of justice for atrocity crimes. Indonesian authorities must treat this case as a priority and give it the attention and resources it needs.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, 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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A woman sits in a public space in Kabul. Under new Taliban laws, a wife who visits her relatives without her husband's permission faces up to three months in prison. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
KABUL, Apr 21 2026 (IPS)

The Taliban have announced new laws that effectively legalise domestic violence against women and children. Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, signed a decree introducing a new criminal code in January. It contains three parts, ten chapters, and 119 articles that legalise violence, codify social inequality, and introduce punitive measures widely condemned as a return to slavery.

“The laws are yet another attack on women and they blatantly violate human rights,” says Mitra (name changed for privacy), a women’s rights activist based in Afghanistan.

The laws, which were leaked to the public by various organizations and media outlets, have left people, especially women, in shock. Yet they are unable to act or even raise their voices. Under the new code, opposing or speaking negatively about Taliban rule is considered a crime and can lead to criminal punishment.

According to Article 32 of the Taliban’s penal code, husbands have the right to physically discipline their wives and children. As long as no bones are broken and no visible bleeding occurs, man’s actions are not considered a crime and carry no criminal punishment.

Even if it is proved in court that violence inflicted on a woman has caused visible injuries or broken bones, the man faces a maximum sentence of only 15 days in prison.

This Taliban law has effectively legalized domestic violence and blocked women’s access to justice.

According to Article 32 of the Taliban’s penal code, husbands have the right to physically discipline their wives and children. As long as no bones are broken and no visible bleeding occurs, man’s actions are not considered a crime and carry no criminal punishment

According to Article 34 of the Taliban’s penal code, if a woman repeatedly visits her father’s home or relatives without her husband’s permission and does not return to her husband’s house, this is considered a crime for both the woman and her family members. The punishment can be up to three months in prison.

A husband has the right to violently assault his wife if she disobeys, according to the new law.

This Taliban decree forces women to remain in their homes under all circumstances, even in the face of threats and domestic violence. Women can no longer seek protection or shelter in their own family homes.

According to documents from the human rights organization Rawadari, the Taliban’s penal code, was signed into law by Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada on January 7, 2026, and subsequently distributed to provincial judicial institutions for implementation.

The decrees issued by the Taliban are usually kept secret within their judicial institutions and communicated to the public only through mosques and community elders. The public learns of them only when the media and rights organization gain access and publish them.

Taliban rule has effectively divided Afghan society into four classes, with punishment for a crime determined not by the nature of the crime but by the offender’s social status. At the top are religious scholars, who receive advice and caution rather than criminal punishment.

Next comes the elite, which includes those in the ruling class, such as village elders and wealthy merchants. They are subject to a lighter punishment scale and usually avoid prison sentences, for example.

The middle class faces more severe punishment. At the bottom of the ladder is the lower class whose punishment can include public flogging and harsh prison terms.

The new law also employs a term referring to slaves as distinct from free people. Slavery was officially abolished in Afghanistan in 1923. Under the new code, treating people as slaves is back to normal practice. For example, a master has the legal right to discipline his subordinate and a husband his wife. It effectively dismantles the principle of equality before the law.

Mitra says these Taliban laws are a clear attack on women and violate all their human rights. By enforcing these rules, the Taliban have confined women to the four walls of their homes, forcing them to endure any kind of abuse in silence.

“What the Taliban have stated in Articles 32 and 34 makes your hair stand on end. The Taliban see women only as sexual objects. These laws legitimise all forms of violence against women, and they cannot even seek justice or take refuge in their father’s or brother’s home. In effect, this officially imprisons women under the full weight of domestic violence,” she says.

All these provisions were drafted without discussion and have come into force with little discussion and no public input. Their existence only became known when the human rights organization Rawadari obtained the laws and published them on its Pashtun language website. Soon after being signed, they were immediately sent to the provinces to be processed by Taliban-run courts.

As Maryam, a resident of Ragh District in Badakhshan, points out, once the Taliban’s laws are announced in mosques by the local mullahs, they are immediately enforced in districts and villages, and all cases are judged under those rules.

“Most people in our village are illiterate, and even those who are educated or know about women’s rights cannot say anything out of fear. If they even utter one word, the local people turn against them, and trouble follows. Women are forced to accept whatever their husbands say because they have no other choice,” she says.

Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they have been issuing and enforcing decrees and laws that have consistently violated human rights, confining women to the four walls of their homes. But this time, they have gone further, granting legal legitimacy to all forms of violence against women.

Mitra is calling on all human rights organizations and the international community to stand against the Taliban’s actions and not allow them to drag women into a system of slavery from the early centuries. She warns that if the world does not stand with Afghan women, they will be pushed toward destruction and face a major humanitarian catastrophe.

Excerpt:

On 27 October, Omer, a Community Development Committee member, supports health workers at the UNICEF-supported mobile clinic in Al Jadab village in Atbara, River Nile State. Through this initiative, UNICEF is restoring lifesaving healthcare services, such as nutrition, immunization, antenatal and postnatal services, medical consultations, and essential medicines, closer to vulnerable communities. Credit: UNICEF/Mohamed Dawod

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 2 2026 (IPS)

Global human migration is at record-high levels, as the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that roughly 1 in 8 people—about one billion individuals—are on the move. Many of these migrants and refugees face harsh living conditions and heightened challenges, such as poverty, insecurity, and limited access to basic services. With the number of international migrants having doubled since 1990, new findings from WHO call for expanding health systems to meet the growing scale of needs.

“Refugees and migrants are not just recipients of care, they are also health workers, caregivers and community leaders,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO. “Health systems are only truly universal when they serve everyone. “Like anyone else, refugees and migrants need uninterrupted, affordable, and equitable access to health services wherever they are.”

WHO estimates that there are approximately 304 million international migrants worldwide, including 170 million migrant workers. Roughly 117 million of those are persons who have been forcibly displaced, 49 million are children, and 2.3 million have been born as refugees.

More than 71 percent of the world’s international migrants find refuge in low to middle-income countries, which often face the most severe resource constraints and protection challenges. Marginalized groups are disproportionately affected: women and girls are especially vulnerable to gender-based violence and often lack access to related services; unaccompanied children face heightened risks of exploitation, abuse, and neglect; and persons with disabilities face elevated barriers to accessibility and increased exposure to discrimination.

Refugees and migrants have been found to experience greater exposure to health risks, in part driven by conditions that restrict movement and access to care, as well as persistent discrimination and language and cultural barriers. These challenges are exacerbated by ongoing conflict and climate-related disasters, leaving millions around the world increasingly vulnerable to infectious and chronic diseases, mental health issues, and dangerous living and working conditions.

“We cannot talk about refugee and migrant health without also addressing emergencies,” said Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, WHO’s executive director for health emergencies. “Whether it’s a conflict, a climate-related crisis, or an epidemic that forces movement, these crises expose the fragility of health systems and magnify the vulnerabilities of all those already at risk.”

On March 26, WHO launched its World Report on Promoting the Health of Refugees and Migrants: Monitoring Progress on the WHO Global Action Plan, establishing what it describes as the first global baseline for tracking progress toward inclusive, migrant-responsive health systems. Based on data from more than 93 Member States, the report highlights both a growing shift in national responses to migrant and refugee health needs and the persistent structural gaps that continue to hinder progress toward equitable access.

WHO found that out of the member states surveyed, only 42 percent reported having emergency preparedness and disaster reduction or response programs in place for migrant or refugee communities. Just 40 percent indicated that they provide training for health workers in culturally responsive care, while only 37 percent reported having systems to collect, monitor, and analyze migration-related health data—information that is rarely disseminated enough to support a more coordinated global response.

Discrimination remains widespread in low- and middle-income countries that host large numbers of refugees and migrants, with misinformation and disinformation continuing to fuel negative perceptions of these communities. Only 30 percent of surveyed countries reported having communication campaigns in place to counter these misconceptions and discriminatory language.

Anti-migrant sentiment remains particularly pronounced, with internally displaced persons, migrant workers, international students, and migrants under irregular circumstances being far less likely to access health services. Additionally, refugees and migrants are largely unrepresented in governance and decision-making processes that shape their access to health rights in most surveyed countries.

“The phenomena of displacement is unfortunately happening more frequently in countries with fragile systems, fragile economies and limited domestic resources,” said Dr Santino Severoni, head of WHO’s Special Initiative on Health and Migration and lead author of the report. “There is almost no mention of irregular migrants in those emergency plans and response or in disease risk reductions, there is no systematic approach in assessing the system to see how their system is really functioning, how efficient and effective it is. This is really a call for action to keep the promise of sharing a bit of responsibility in managing those emergencies.”

Over the past year, international support for refugee health has seen considerable declines. Figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that their 2025 response plan has secured only 23 percent of its USD 10.6 billion goal. The agency projects that this could cause over 12.8 million displaced persons to lose access to lifesaving health interventions this year.

Global responses have been polarizing. Some countries have adopted inclusive policies that support migrant communities—such as Chile— which has supplied municipal health councils for migrants and refugees with community representatives. Other countries, such as the United States and Canada, have cut health insurance coverage for undocumented migrants, forcing them to pay out of pocket for lifesaving care and increasing protection risks.

Through the report, WHO called for greater inclusion of refugee and migrant voices in decision-making processes, as well as improved coordination between governments. With a smoother flow of data between Member States, WHO will be able to more effectively shape health, employment, housing, and protection services.

WHO emphasized that responses should be specifically tailored to the needs of different migrant subgroups, while remaining committed to countering misinformation and discrimination through “evidence-based action.” Investment in refugee and migrant health systems has been found to deliver significant returns, fostering improved social and economic cohesion, revitalizing fragile health systems, and boosting global security, all while reducing long-term costs by promoting these communities to contribute back to society.

“The health of refugees and migrants is not a marginal concern: it is a defining issue of our time,” said Severoni. “By acting now, countries can ensure that refugees and migrants are not left behind, and that health systems are stronger, fairer and more prepared for the future.”

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The UNFPA released a report detailing how women were suffering widespread mistreatment during childbirth across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Credit: UNFPA

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 30 2026 (IPS)

Government and medical professionals must implement systematic changes to deal with a “crisis” of obstetric violence (OV) across Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), experts and rights campaigners have said.

The call comes as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released a report on March 12 detailing how women were suffering widescale mistreatment during childbirth across the region.

“This report is a wake-up call. All stakeholders must make sure that women’s rights are respected and protected in all facilities in the health system and beyond,” Tamar Khomasuridze, UNFPA Sexual and Reproductive Health Adviser for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, told Inter Press Service (IPS).

The report, Respectful Maternity Care: Women’s Experiences and Outlooks in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, highlighted what the UNFPA said was a “pervasive yet often hidden OV crisis that violates women’s fundamental human rights and dignity”.

The survey, which was based on online responses from over 2,600 women who gave birth recently and conducted across 16 countries and territories in the region, found that 67 percent of respondents reported at least one form of mistreatment, including non-consensual medical procedures, verbal and physical abuse, and significant breaches of privacy.

Nearly half (48.1 percent) of women underwent obstetric procedures – such as episiotomies, Caesarean sections, or the administration of oxytocin – without their informed consent.

Meanwhile, about 24 percent of surveyed women reported experiencing verbal abuse, including yelling and humiliation, and 1 in 10 endured physical or sexual abuse during labour or gynaecological examinations. For example, 12 percent of the surveyed women reported being physically restrained during labour, such as being tied to the bed or subjected to aggressive physical contact under the pretext of facilitating delivery. Just over 10 percent experienced different forms of sexual abuse, ranging from inappropriate touching to more severe forms of assault (disrespectful manipulation of the genitals).

The survey also revealed a massive lack of awareness of OV among women in the region – almost 54 percent of surveyed women said women were unfamiliar with the term “obstetric violence”. And of those that knew they were victims of OV, very few reported such incidents – only two percent of those mistreated officially reported their experience, often due to a lack of trust in accountability mechanisms or fear of retaliation.

Previous research into the extent of OV in the region is limited and experts say it is difficult to gauge whether the situation in the region has changed in recent years.

But campaigners say the report underlines that it remains a serious problem.

“Obstetric violence has always existed, but for a long time it remained invisible, normalised, and embedded within what was perceived as ‘standard medical practice’. The major shift over the past decade is not necessarily in the prevalence of the phenomenon but rather in its increased visibility at the public, legal, and institutional levels, including its inclusion on the global agenda of human rights and public health,” Alina Andronache, a gender public policy expert at the Partnership for Development Center (CPD) in Moldova, who helped author the UNFPA report, told IPS.

“The report outlines a mixed picture: recognition and visibility of the phenomenon are increasing, yet the prevalence of experiences of abuse, coercion, and lack of consent remains alarmingly high,” she added.

Rights activists say that the phenomenon is closely linked to the wider issue of prevalent attitudes to women in the region.

“The report clearly shows that obstetric violence is not merely an issue of inadequate medical practices but is deeply embedded in broader social and cultural structures—particularly gender discrimination, power imbalances between the patient and medical staff, rigid institutional hierarchies, and norms that socialise women to accept authority without questioning it, including in highly intimate and vulnerable contexts such as childbirth,” said Andronache.

She highlighted the report’s finding that 58.4 percent of respondents believe that a mother must accept any intervention for the benefit of the child, even if it may harm her, while 19.6 percent consider that doctors may take a decision without a woman’s consent to protect the child.

“These perceptions reflect a profound internalisation of the idea that women’s bodily autonomy can be suspended during childbirth in favour of a medical authority perceived as unquestionable. This internalisation has two major consequences: it legitimises abusive or coercive practices, which are no longer perceived as violations of rights but as ‘necessary’ or ‘medically justified’ interventions, and it  directly contributes to underreporting and to the difficulty of recognising obstetric violence as such. If women are socialised to believe that they do not have the right to refuse, to ask questions, or to negotiate interventions, then their experiences are not necessarily identified as abuse but rather as a ‘normal’ part of childbirth,” she explained.

The report includes a call to action that outlines critical steps to address systemic problems with OV in the EECA states. These include legislation to protect women against OV; human rights-centred training for all healthcare personnel to shift clinical attitudes and ensure dignity is maintained at the point of service, as well as implementing monitoring and other measures to ensure accountability; and strengthening education and wider awareness of OV.

The UNFPA says its call to action has been endorsed by all countries in the survey and other stakeholders and will become part of action plans on OV at the national level.

But it is unclear how easy it will be to effect meaningful change, especially in a region where some countries have very conservative social cultures and wider problems with women’s rights.

The report showed that among respondents from Central Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, around two thirds of women were unaware of OV. The report says this is due, in part, to traditional norms surrounding women’s roles and childbirth, which may make women less open to discussions about obstetric abuse.

Khomasuridze admitted that there were “of course sensitivities in different countries” in the region but was confident that with the help of various stakeholders, including civil society organisations, women’s rights groups and patient groups, changes would be implemented.

Andronache said that in countries where strongly conservative political policies and societal attitudes are prevalent, it was crucial that “the message be adapted to the context”.

“In more conservative societies, the approach should not be perceived as confrontational or ideological but rather framed as an issue of safety, dignity, and quality of care for both mother and child. Emphasising health, respect, and communication may be more readily accepted than a discourse focused exclusively on rights,” she said.

She added that it was essential that women be made aware of OV during their engagement with healthcare professionals – prenatal courses should be accessible and include, alongside medical information, clear explanations about women’s rights, informed consent, and what respectful care entails. ‘Meanwhile, information must reach those who need it most, she said — particularly in rural areas and in communities with more limited access to education.

“This requires simple messages, delivered in accessible languages and through channels that women already trust, including healthcare providers, community leaders, or other women sharing their experiences,” Andronache said.

“Awareness is built not only through the dissemination of information, but also through the creation of a space in which women feel able to ask questions, understand what is happening to them, and recognise when their rights are not being respected,” she added.

However, even in places where there is more awareness, serious problems with OV remain.

The study found that awareness of OV is higher in Eastern European countries, in part because advocacy initiatives regarding women’s rights during childbirth have contributed to increased visibility of the issue. Yet OV is widespread in some of these states.

In the survey the highest dissatisfaction rates with their childbirth experience were recorded among respondents from the Western Balkans (Albania, Serbia and Kosovo).

In 2022, a study by lawyers in Serbia found that women in the country are regularly subjected to various forms of violence at maternity clinics and hospitals, including not just verbal abuse and humiliation at the hands of staff, but violent physical examinations and invasive procedures without consent.

In January 2024, Marica Mihajlovic, a Roma woman, claimed that during labour her doctor jumped on her stomach, slapped her and racially abused her. Her baby died soon after birth.

A 2023 report on OV in Moldova included testimony from scores of OV victims, some of whom were left with serious physical and mental health issues afterwards.

As well as having to deal with the physical and mental damage of their experiences, victims of OV in the region also often face significant barriers to any redress for their suffering.

“Women who are aware of obstetric violence and would like to take action encounter, in reality, a form of distance—not only physical, but also emotional and institutional. In theory, reporting mechanisms should be ‘within reach’: easy to understand, accessible, and safe. In practice, in many countries this distance is far too great,” explained Andronache.

She said many women who want to report OV struggle with difficult and bureaucratic systems for doing so. Many are also put off by feelings that reporting what happened to them will not change anything or, worse, “that they would be placed in a position of having to prove their suffering, of being questioned, or even invalidated”.

“In the absence of clear and credible accountability mechanisms, reporting is not perceived as a solution, but as a long, uncertain, and emotionally draining process,” Andronache said.

Some also find that after a difficult or traumatic experience, they simply do not have the emotional resources to engage in a formal process. “They seek calm, recovery, and the ability to care for their child. The question ‘is it worth going through this?’ becomes very real,” said Andronache.

While the report identifies the scale of the OV crisis in the region and changes needed to reverse, or at least lessen it, fundamental improvement is not expected to come overnight, regardless of how enthusiastically governments embrace the UNFPA’s recommendations.

“Some changes can be implemented relatively quickly—for example, establishing clear and accessible reporting mechanisms, informing women, introducing more transparent procedures, or providing basic training for medical staff. These depend largely on political will and organisational capacity and can be achieved within a relatively short timeframe.

“However, the more difficult aspect is the transformation of mindsets—both within the medical system and in society at large. A deeper transformation to a system in which women feel safe to speak out and which responds with accountability and respect is a long-term process that may take a decade or more. At its core, this is a cultural shift, not merely a regulatory one,” said Andronache.

Khomasuridze agreed.

“We and our partners have a long way to go. Progress depends on action at the national level and we are very well positioned in [EECA] countries to accelerate progress, working with government, professional societies, civil societies, women’s groups, and patients’ groups to make sure that this transformative agenda is implemented,” she said.

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Vivian van de Perre, Deputy Special Representative for Protection and Operations in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) and Interim Head of MONUSCO, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 2026 (IPS)

In the month following the reopening of the Burundi-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border, the humanitarian crisis in the DRC has deteriorated considerably, recently marked by an influx of Congolese refugees returning home, where they face overcrowded conditions and a severe shortage of essential services. This comes in the midst of escalating clashes between rebel groups AFC and M23, and forces affiliated with the Kinshasa government, with drone strikes causing widespread destruction and pushing violence closer to Burundi’s borders, where conditions are most dire.

Vivian van de Perre, Deputy Special Representative for Protection and Operations with the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), described the current humanitarian situation as “extremely volatile”. During a press stakeout on March 26, she highlighted that the rapid spread of the conflict from North and South Kivu into Tshopo Province and toward Burundi’s borders is a major concern, warning that it increases the risk of a broader “regional conflagration.”

Van de Perre also warned that armed militants have been increasingly relying on the use of heavy weapons and drone strikes in densely populated urban areas, which have caused great damage to civilian infrastructure as well as serious risks to civilian safety, underscoring recent violent incidents at the Kisagani Bangoka International Airport and in Goma, the largest city in North Kivu. Additionally, she warned of M23’s growing presence in Goma, where the coalition has managed to gain influence, undermine state authority, and disrupt humanitarian aid deliveries.

Furthermore, the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC (UNJHRO) has uncovered a considerable rise in human rights violations committed by armed groups. Since December 2025, approximately 173 cases of conflict-related sexual violence have been documented, affecting at least 111 victims, the majority of whom were women and girls.

Van de Perre described these findings as “only the tip of the iceberg,” and highlighted growing rates of exploitation, particularly along artisanal mining sites, where child labour is especially pronounced. Armed groups have also been alleged to hamper monitoring, investigation, and justice mechanisms, and subject human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society actors to intimidation and arbitrary detention.

This follows a sharp escalation of hostilities between the armed groups in December 2025, which forced hundreds of thousands of Congolese to flee to Burundi, most coming from Uvira in South Kivu Province and the surrounding areas. Figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) show that after M23’s withdrawal from Uvira in January and a relative return of stability, more than 33,000 refugees began returning home since the border’s reopening on February 23, with most crossing through the Kavimira border point. Many of these returnees already received little humanitarian assistance in Burundi due to chronic underfunding.

“Conditions in many areas of return in the DRC remain fragile, with acute humanitarian needs,” said Ali Mahamat, UNHCR Head of Sub-Office in Goma, DRC, on March 24 at a press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. “Initial UNHCR assessments in Uvira and Fizi show families arriving with few belongings, in urgent need of shelter, basic household items, health care, and access to water and sanitation. Many returned to find their homes destroyed and belongings looted, leaving them in deep despair and unable to resume normal life without substantial support.”

According to the latest updates from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), roughly 60 percent of returnees are living in damaged shelters and over 30 percent face challenges accessing their land. Returnees face heightened risks of gender-based violence, forced recruitment into armed groups, extortion, and exploitation, with female-headed households disproportionately affected due to limited livelihood opportunities for women, which leave these communities entrenched in poverty and especially vulnerable.

Figures from UNHCR show that approximately 30 percent of returnees had been taking refuge in Burundi’s Busama displacement camp, where they faced significant levels of overcrowding and limited access to clean water, sanitation services, healthcare, and shelter. Currently, roughly 4,500 Congolese refugees remain stuck at transit points as they await being relocated to Busama. Additionally, Burundi continues to host over 109,000 Congolese refugees, with 67,000 of them in Busuma alone.

Additionally, internal displacement remains widespread in the DRC, with more than 6.4 million people currently displaced. IFRC estimates that over 5.2 million internally displaced Congolese are concentrated in North and South Kivu, as well as Ituri, 96 percent as a result of ongoing armed violence. According to van de Perre, over 26.6 million people, roughly a quarter of DRC’s population, are projected to face food insecurity this year.

Currently, UNHCR’s response plan to assist returnees, refugees, and displaced Congolese civilians is only 34 percent funded, seeking a total of USD 145 million. MONUSCO is currently on the frontlines providing protection services for nearly 3,000 civilians in Djaiba village. Through the mission, the UN has been able to support over 18,000 farmers in harvesting and transporting crops and has conducted 204 patrols. Van de Perre stressed that stronger governance and security enforcement are crucial in protecting vulnerable civilians, and disarmament and repatriation efforts must be conducted to resolve broader regional tensions.

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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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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:

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 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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The ordinary sounds of Nahid Ali’s home in Khartoum were completely drowned out by the sound of war which began on April 15 2023. Her baby was just 21 days old. The morning started as any typical day for a mother who had just given birth to her baby and needed to nurse her newborn while she took care of her other children. The gunfire began to erupt. The fighting began when two groups started to battle each other in the streets. The fighting which began in her area developed into a destructive countrywide war in Sudan which spread to her street within moments.

Credit: Nahid Ali, Communications Manager, Plan International

As a mother, she could not protect her children from the sound of airstrikes or the fear of hunger. As a humanitarian, she felt the crisis in her bones. “I became one of the people I used to help,” she says. Now, when mothers describe fleeing under fire or struggling to feed their children, she does not simply empathize. She understands. The war which forced Nahid to leave her house has developed into one of worlds worst humanitarian crisis. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 30.4 million people which represents two-thirds of the global population now require humanitarian assistance, including 7 million internally displaced people. Cities have been shattered, communities have emptied, front lines shift, but civilians remain trapped in the wreakage created by this war.

Sudan’s health infrastructure has come crumbling down under the pressure of the conflict. Over 70 percent of the health facilities are not functioning. Hospitals have been bombed, looted, or occupied. Healthcare staff have either fled, not been paid, or have been killed. Disease is rampant in the crowded camps, and lack of medication is the new normal. What was once curable is now fatal.

The situation is being made worse by the effects of the climate change and the economic collapse. The purchasing power has been eroded by the high rates of inflation. The prices of food have skyrocketed. Water is now a luxury. People are not eating for days. The situation is affecting the women, children, elderly, and the displaced the most.

The situation has now spread beyond the borders of Sudan. The conflict has displaced over 2.9 million people into Chad, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and South Sudan. These nations are already dealing with health challenges of their own.

The conflict started in April 2023, as tension between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces transformed into an armed conflict in Khartoum. The conflict has since spread across the Darfur region. What started as a political power struggle has now resulted in the displacement of populations, starvation, and genocide.

In a report released by the United Nations, an Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan established that the “evidence establishes the existence of at least three underlying acts of genocide in Darfur. These are the killing of members of the protected ethnic group, the causing of serious bodily and mental harm, and the deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part.”

The report is based on the situation in El Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, a town besieged for 18 months before the main attack. The report established the “scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around El Fasher were not random excesses of war,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the mission. “They formed part of a planned and organized operation that bears the defining characteristics of genocide.”

Children are at the eye of this storm.

According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 1.3 million children in areas where famine is already taking place. Over 770,000 children are expected to face severe acute malnutrition this year. Many of them will not survive. In the final six months of 2024 alone, there were over 900 grave violations against children reported, eighty percent of them were killings, mainly in Darfur, Khartoum, and Gezira Province. These are just a few of the reported cases, which humanitarian agencies say is just a small fraction of the true extent of the crisis.

The Integrated Food Security Phase classification (IPC) said the thresholds for acute malnutrition were surpassed in two new areas of North Darfur, Um Baru and Kernoi, following the fall of the regional capital, El Fasher, in October 2025 and a massive exodus. December assessments found acute malnutrition levels among children of 52.9 per cent in Um Baru, nearly twice the famine threshold and about 34 per cent in Kernoi.

It is a challenging job to deliver aid to the war-torn areas. The roads are either unsafe or impassable, bureaucratic delays are common too and the armed groups attack aid convoys as well. “Sometimes the assistance cannot even arrive,” Nahid says.

In these places of displacement, Nahid witnesses the toll taken on the human body by the numbers.

“Sexual violence is a tool of war. Many of the women we meet were attacked as they fled their homes. Some were forced to watch as their friends were attacked in front of family members. Some are pregnant, waiting for services that might never materialize.” The trauma these women face is compounded by shame and a total lack of services.

In some communities, the shame of rape leads to the forced marriage of the raped women to the rapist. This provides a context for the child born of rape, it’s a way to give the family a sense of honour. But the damage done by this violence cannot be overstated. The girls who were raped have yet to open up about the violence they experienced, psychosocial services for these women are scarce, safe havens are hard to find and their needs are overwhelming. Children come to the camps alone, separated, orphaned, lost. Some saw their families die. Some crossed through combat zones to escape.

Nahid recalls a six-year-old girl who is always scared, she describes how in Sudan, women wear a traditional attire called the tobe. Whenever the girl sees a woman wearing a tobe, she runs towards her crying, “My mother, my mother.” She hopes against all hopes that this woman is her real mom, Nahid says.

“We need the world not to forget Sudan.” She says this is what she hopes for: more solidarity from the world community, more funding, more pressure on governments.

What keeps her going is the strength she sees all around her. She sees women organizing community kitchens from scratch. She sees families sharing the little food they have. She sees women organizing their own support groups. Sudanese women inspire her most. Many have lost homes, livelihoods, and loved ones, and yet, they still care for children, advocate for services, and hold communities together.

“They have lost so much,” Nahid says. “But they are still standing.”

Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist, host of The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices in peacebuilding and human rights. Sania has previously worked with CNN, Al Jazeera and TIME.

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The photo shows an all-girls cricket team from Dir that made it to the finals of the inter-regional games, all without coaching, back in 2023. "Imagine what they can achieve with the right facilities and proper training," said Noorena Shams, also from Dir. Courtesy: Noorena Shams

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Mar 4 2026 (IPS)

“I was very happy to see the way Aina Wazir was playing cricket,” says 28-year-old Noorena Shams, a professional squash player, when she saw the seven-year-old’s video. The clip, which spread rapidly across social media, drew widespread praise for the young girl’s remarkable talent.

But the events that unfolded were like reliving her past.

“It was like watching my younger self,” said Shams, who belongs to Dir, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), bordering Afghanistan, close to where Aina lives in North Waziristan. Both are part of Pakistan’s tribal region.

“Aina, like me, does not have a father to fight the world for her,” she said quietly.

The video also caught the attention of Javed Afridi, CEO of Peshawar Zalmi, who expressed interest in inducting Aina into the upcoming Zalmi Women League. In a post on X, he requested her contact details, promising her cricket equipment and training facilities.

“We couldn’t have imagined the video would get so much attention,” said her cousin, requesting anonymity, speaking to IPS by phone from Shiga Zalwel Khel, a village along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in North Waziristan. “We were overjoyed; it meant new opportunities and a brighter future for her.”

But the joy was short-lived.

Caught Between Militancy and Military

The video caught the attention of local militants.

Angered by the public display of a girl playing sport, the militants abducted Zafran Wazir—a local teacher who had filmed and uploaded the video with the family’s consent—and forced him to issue a public apology for violating “Islamic values and Pashtun traditions”. It has been reported that he was tortured.

The militants have warned the family that Aina cannot leave the village and that the girl must not accept any offers from anyone. “They said she can play cricket,” said her cousin, “But there should be no videos.”

“Ordinary people in the region are caught between a rock and a hard place—trapped between militant groups and the Pakistan army’s ongoing armed operations,” said Razia Mehsood, 36, a journalist from South Waziristan. “The Taliban tolerate no dissent, and our once-peaceful region is now scarred by landmines on the ground and quadcopters and drones overhead. People are living under constant psychological strain,” she added.

Noorena Shams, a professional squash player, has shown her support for Aina Wazir. Courtesy: Noorena Shams

Defying the Odds

“I hope she [Aina] can leave the place,” said Maria Toorpakai, 35, the first tribal Pakistani woman who went to play in international squash tournaments, turning professional in 2007.

“Whenever there is a talented girl, every effort should be made to remove her from the toxic environment—even if it means a huge sacrifice from the family,” she said, who belongs to neighbouring South Waziristan but was speaking to IPS from Toronto, where she now resides.

Both Toorpakai and Shams had to leave their homes to escape relentless scrutiny. Belonging to a conservative and patriarchal region, they had to disguise themselves as boys to pursue sports.

Toorpakai cut her hair short, dressed like a boy, and renamed herself “Genghis Khan” to participate in competitive sports.

Shams, meanwhile, was hesitantly allowed to play badminton because it was deemed “more appropriate for young women”.

Despite her parents’ support, she watched boys playing in the only cricket club in Dir, founded by her father.

But theirs is not the only journey fraught with hurdles because of a patriarchal mindset and a rigid tribal background where women’s visibility itself is contested.

“The greatest tragedy is that women’s voices are silenced and excluded from representation, while traditions disguised as religion persist, tying honour and dishonour to women,” said Mehsood. Both Toorpakai and Shams know all this too well. Their families faced constant social rebuke and accusations for bringing dishonour to their villages and tribes, all for playing a sport.

They are not alone.

Athletes like Sadia Gul (former Pakistan No. 1 in squash), Tameen Khan (who in 2022 was Pakistan’s fastest female sprinter), and Salma Faiz (cricketer) relocated from districts including Bannu, D.I. Khan, and Karak to Peshawar, the provincial capital—not just for better opportunities but to escape constant scrutiny.

“If you’re lucky enough that your grandfather, father, or brother doesn’t put a stop to your dreams, then it will be your uncles,” said Salma Faiz, the only sister among six brothers. “And if not them, the neighbours will start counting the minutes you take to get home. They’ll question why you train under male coaches, who watches your matches, and even what you wear beneath your chador. And if it’s still not them, then the villagers will whisper behind your back or land at your doorstep, convincing your parents that girls shouldn’t play sports at all.”

Faiz endured opposition from her elder brother but never gave up cricket. She eventually got selected for the national women’s cricket team.

“Aina is fortunate to receive such overwhelming applause,” said Faiz, now 40, living in Peshawar and working as a lecturer in health and physical education at Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University.

“I urge her parents not to surrender to social pressure; they should stand by her and encourage her. She has extraordinary talent—I’ve seen the way she plays,” Faiz pointed out.

Safe Spaces for Women Athletes

Each of these women is now creating ways for their younger counterpart to access the opportunity they lacked.

Faiz has opened her home to girls from tribal regions pursuing sport. When space runs out, she arranges hostel accommodation to ensure they get a shot at opportunities that would likely never reach their village.

Toorpakai, through the Maria Toorpakai Foundation, has, over the years, built a strong network, providing safe spaces for young sportswomen from her region.

But now she wants to go beyond providing temporary support. Her vision to build a state-of-the-art Toorpakai Sports School—a residential facility where girls like Aina Wazir can train seriously, study properly, and live without fear—remains a dream.

“All I want from the state is six acres of land near Islamabad,” she said. “Far enough from tribal hostility but accessible to girls from across Pakistan and international coaches I intend to rope in. I can manage the rest. I can raise funds.”

For over two years, her proposal has been stalled by bureaucratic red tape. “It tells you everything,” she said. “The state simply isn’t interested.”

Shams, too, like Toorpakai, runs the Noorena Shams Foundation, currently supporting four women athletes by giving them a monthly stipend for their training, transport and rent. But if anyone else needs equipment, tuition fees, or house rent, her foundation is able to furnish those needs. She even helped construct two cricket pitches for Faiz’s university.

As the first female athlete elected to the executive committees of the Provincial Squash Association, the Sports Management Committee, the Olympic Association, and the Pakistan Cycling Federation, she has championed young athletes—especially sportswomen— ensuring their concerns are heard.

“I continue to bring to the table issues of athletes’ mental and physical health, the need for international-level coaching, the safety and harassment women face, and the importance of integrating competitive sports into school curricula.”

Using Religion to Quash Dreams

Social media may have provided Aina Wazir with a platform to showcase her talent, but it has also exposed her to hostility.

“We are not against a child playing cricket,” said 27-year-old Mufti Ijaz Ahmed, a religious scholar from South Waziristan. “But she must stop once she becomes a woman. It is against our traditions for women to run around in pants and shirts in public. It is vulgar. If Aina is allowed to do this, every girl will want to follow—and we cannot accept that.”

“The mera jism, meri marzi (my body, my choice) slogan will not work here,” Ahmed went on, referring to a popular slogan that has been chanted since March 8, 2018, and which came under heavy criticism for being a rebellion against the cultural values and Islam.

“Who is he to declare that Aina can’t play?” retorted an incensed Maria Toorpakai, who also serves on the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Women in Sport Commission. “Whenever a girl picks up a bat or a ball, Islam is said to be endangered,” she added.

“I would respect them if they confronted and condemned the real ills in my region—drug abuse, child marriage, bacha bazi (the exploitation of adolescent boys coerced into cross-dressing, dancing, and sexual abuse), and the spread of HIV and AIDS. Instead, they obsess over distorted ideas of honour and dishonour. They neither understand the world we live in nor the true essence of Islam. Moreover, they have done nothing for our people.”

National responsibility

Ultimately, she argued, the responsibility lies with the state. It cannot afford to look away while intimidation silences young girls with talent and ambition. It is not only a personal tragedy but also a national loss when talent in remote villages is stifled before it can surface.

“It is the government’s duty to deal firmly with such elements,” she said. “And if it cannot protect its daughters, then it must ask itself why it is in power at all.”

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Dr Busingye Kabumba is a law professor at Makerere University. He said there is a misconception about sexual violence against men. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Feb 26 2026 (IPS)

When people ordinarily think about sexual violence, it’s of the rape of women by men. In Uganda, as in other countries, activists say men are also victims of sexual violence perpetrated by women, though males remain silent.

The UNFPA 2022 gap analysis of population-related indicators and issues in Uganda report gives details of sexual violence experienced by men and women.

“Similar to physical violence, women are reported to be more exposed to sexual violence than men, although the trend shows a decline over time. The incidence of sexual violence decreased from 27.8 percent in 2011 to 17 percent in 2022 but remains significantly higher than the 6 percent recorded for men in 2022. In the 12 months preceding the 2022 survey, 11 percent of women reported experiencing sexual violence, compared to 4 percent of men.”

The perpetrators of sexual violence against women include current husbands/intimate partners, strangers, friends, and acquaintances. For men, the identified perpetrators are current or former wives/intimate partners, the study says.

Section 110 of Uganda’s penal code describes rape as having unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman. Under that provision, only a male can be found guilty.

Lawyer Ivan Kyazze conducted an exploration study of the sufficiency of the existing international conventions and statutes in Uganda against rape that protect male victims from female perpetrators.

“I want to pose a question. Do you believe that men are raped by women? Think about it,” he asked an audience at Makerere University’s law school auditorium.

“Sexual violence against men has existed but has received relatively little attention. Because in Uganda and elsewhere, men are considered strong and dominant.”

He said for many, it is physically impossible for a woman to rape a man, and in law, it is a more serious offence to forcibly penetrate someone than to force them to penetrate you.

Kyazze, a senior State Prosecutor, suggested that Uganda’s law on rape is biased and that it needs to be changed to protect men who are raped by men.

He said rape is an international crime that is not just growing but is also highly contested and without a joint legal definition.

Rape is an act of sexual assault and a violation of bodily integrity and sexual autonomy, defined as the “non-consensual [invasion of] the body of a person by conduct resulting in penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the victim or of the perpetrator with a sexual organ.

Kyazze explained that, typically, society imagines men as the perpetrators and women as the victims of rape.

“We need to acknowledge that there are other stories. Stories of men who experience rape, sometimes at the hands of female perpetrators. This is a reality that many men face,” he argued.

He said this abuse is rarely discussed openly.

“In part, this is due to societal stereotypes that make it difficult for male survivors to come forward.”

Being a state prosecutor, Kyazze said some men told him that they were sexually abused by their spouses, workmates, and employers, but the cases don’t get to the courts.

“Today, male victims continue to face physical and psychological harm, including anxiety and depression, and denial of justice. Such a gap within our law leaves our country with no effort to prevent sexual violence against men, in particular rape, and it encourages the harmful stereotypes that exist in our society,” said Kyazze.

According to Kyazze, the rape of men by women happens when the female abuser uses emotional, sexual intimidation tactics and drugs to facilitate the rape.

He explained that when a woman has power or authority over a man, such as in a workplace, she may use that influence to coerce or manipulate a man into a sexual act.

Dr Daphine Agaba, a lecturer at the Department of Gender Studies, Makerere University, believed at one time that a man could not be raped by a woman.

“I asked myself this question several times. How are men raped by women exactly? So to find answers to this question, I polled my male friends,” she said.

In the poll, she discovered that men were willing to relate their experiences with women who had perpetrated sexual violence.  In one case a man said he felt “raped and violated” by his wife, who wanted to have a third child.

From that and other testimonies that Agaba heard from her male colleagues, she said she started understanding something that she had earlier doubted.

However, Agaba was not fully convinced by Kyazze’s suggestion about the need to redefine rape under the penal code.

“That assertion decontextualises rape from its societal position. Rape doesn’t happen in the abstract. Rape is a manifestation of how power operates, and this power is still very largely neocentric. This power play not only affects women, but it also hierarchises men into those who are powerful and those who are not,” she said.

Being a woman and a gender activist, Agaba said she felt the debate could help both women and men survivors of sexual violence.

“Finally, men are going to start taking seriously our (women’s) concerns,” she said.

For over sixty years, Uganda has not had a definition for marital rape — the act of one spouse having sexual intercourse without their spouse’s consent.

Women have attempted to include it in the laws enacted over the past 30 years. But each time they have been defeated. In 2021 President Yoweri Museveni declined to assent to a marital rape law, reportedly because  it was a duplication of other laws, but activists saw it as a setback for women’s rights.

“In the domestic relations bill, activists said marital rape is a very big challenge. When this bill was put before parliament, the male legislators essentially laughed the women legislators out of parliament,” Agaba commented.

“They said, if you’re my wife and I married you, under what circumstances would you say that I raped you?’ By talking about marital rape, this time perpetrated against men, it is my hope and prayer that now that men want to be written into the law, to be included in the law, they will now start to understand the real plight that we’ve been facing. So my question is, now that men want to be included in the rape law, will we see marital rape in our laws?”

Agaba explained that statistics about conviction rates for female rape victims remain too low in Uganda.

“Which means, even as we are talking about men, it’s not yet Uhuru (not yet Independence) for women, not even close. If Uhuru is here, women are about 100 years away from that.  Is that a law that is working for its people?” she asked.

The low conviction rates aside, Agaba told IPS that the elephant in the room was the reality that men are being raped by fellow men, but this issue has been side-stepped in Uganda as elsewhere on the continent.

“In DRC, one in four men has experienced sexual violence. Yet, despite these statistics, few people have asked where this violence comes from. While women are disproportionately affected by sexual and gender violence, its prevalence does not make it exclusive to women. SGBV against men is most often perpetrated by men. It occurs outside the household; the perpetrators are often their acquaintances, their neighbours, and family members.”

She explained that the kind of abuse faced by men in the Congo includes rape, genital mutilation, enforced nudity, and involuntary sterilisation, all of which are perpetrated against both men and women.

Why have men not sought legal action when raped?

Dr Busingye Kabumba, a Senior Law Lecturer at Makerere University’s Law School, said rape has been defined as a crime that leaves the person alive but with a real cost in terms of life.

“That, when someone mentions rape, there’s really no questioning of what is being talked about. One can also think of the rape of men by men, and in those situations, again, there is no questioning what is being spoken of. In some cases, it’s even seen as worse,” adds Kabumba.

Kabumba explained that, like female rape victims, men who are sexually abused by women fear being further traumatised during the court trial.

“I know it’s a very traumatic experience, but then you are in this courtroom, you have a judge, what happened was traumatic, but you’re now being asked to describe it,  there’s a transcriber, there’s a court clerk, and they’re just interested in the details,  they’re not really interested in what you went through. It’s just, yes, ‘what happened?'” said Kabumba

He explained that under Uganda’s case law, there is already a challenge for women who are raped by men. Now, the idea that men could be the victim of sexual violence by a woman would be even more difficult to prosecute.

The survivor may not even be taken seriously if he does decide to report the crime.

“Is it the incredulity about the idea that a man is too powerful to be powerless? “Are we saying men are so powerful that they can never be overruled or violated?” he asked.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Taher M. El-Sonni, Permanent Representative of the State of Libya to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Libya. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2026 (IPS)

A new UN report warns of the “brutal and normalized reality” for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Libya as they face exploitation and human rights violations.

On February 18, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) released a joint report documenting a sharp rise in human rights violations in the country. The agencies warned that coordinated action by Libyan communities, national authorities, and the international community is urgently needed to end impunity and ensure meaningful protection.

Covering the period from January 2024 to December 2025, the report draws on interviews with nearly 100 migrants from 16 countries across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It outlines what the agencies call an “exploitative model preying” on vulnerable populations, where abuses have become “business as usual”.

According to the findings, migrants and refugees face abduction, arbitrary detention, human trafficking, forced labor, enforced disappearances, and severe forms of abuse, including sexual and gender-based violence and torture. Conditions are especially dire near Libya’s borders, where traffickers, smugglers, armed groups, and even state actors subject individuals to systematic violence and exploitation.

“After their disembarkation in Libya, they are routinely held in detention centres that are breeding grounds for human rights violations and abuses,” said Suki Nagra, the UN Human Rights Representative to Libya. “We’re seeing waves of racist and xenophobic hate speech and attacks against migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees, as well as interceptions at sea where people are brought back to Libya — which we do not consider a safe place for disembarkation and return.”

The report notes that migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees are often caught in the crossfires of violent clashes between smugglers, traffickers, and armed groups, with many abandoned in the desert to fend for themselves. Those intercepted at Libya’s borders are frequently transferred to formal and informal detention centers before being forcibly expelled without due process, violating the protections against collective expulsions and the right to seek asylum.

According to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), between June 2023 and December 2025, approximately 13,783 migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees were intercepted at the Libya-Tunisia border by Libyan authorities. Many individuals face heightened risks of refoulement and are left without access to water, food, or medical care, further compounding the harsh conditions faced at border crossings. Even after entering Libya, migrants face restrictions on movement between cities, where checkpoints often become sites of extortion and intimidation.

Between July 2024 and June 2025, migrants and asylum-seekers in Libya faced repeated waves of forced expulsions and abandonment in the Sahara Desert. At least 463 individuals were deported to Niger in July 2024, followed by more than 1,400 additional deportations between January and June 2025. The majority of those expelled were Nigerian nationals, including women and children, many of whom were in poor health.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported finding 16 people in the Sahara—including a mother and her daughter who had died of thirst—while nine others were reported missing in the desert. Survivors also reported instances of arbitrary arrests across Tripoli, Misrata and Sabha, where many experienced extortion, torture, and confiscation of belongings before being transported in overcrowded trucks to be left behind in the Sahara without food or water.

2025 saw a sharp increase in violence and expulsions. In February, clashes between brigades affiliated with the Libyan National Army (LNA) led to the destruction of migrant shelters and the arrest of hundreds, many of whom were detained or forcibly deported to Niger. In June, Libyan authorities announced the “rescue” of 1,300 Sudanese migrants stranded near the tri-border region, though reports revealed that some had been previously forcibly expelled. They were eventually returned to al-Kufra, Libya, after spending several days in harsh desert conditions with limited access to food and water.

Migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees that are detained face heightened risks. Reports of the detention centers describe severe overcrowding, enforced disappearances, malnutrition, lack of medical care, extortion, and deaths linked to untreated illnesses. Women, children, pregnant individuals, and people with chronic health conditions are disproportionately affected, often enduring severe psychological trauma alongside physical abuse. Additionally, detainees are often subjected to forced labour under coercive and degrading conditions, including garbage collection, mechanical work, agricultural labour, and even serving as cell guards. Many are also recruited to discipline other detainees, while others are forcibly recruited to guard traffickers’ compounds, detention centers, and farms.

In May 2024, approximately 1,500 migrants from several Sub-Saharan African countries were transferred to Tamanhint following LNA raids, with dozens reportedly dying along the way due to malnutrition, dehydration, and illness. Many had already endured sexual violence and forced labour before being moved.

OHCHR and UNSMIL interviewed 50 men from countries including Bangladesh, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and the occupied Palestinian territory, in which 45 reported being tortured or beaten as a means of extortion while detained. Their families were forced to pay ransom amounts ranging from 500 to 10,000 USD to secure their release.

“I was held in al-Kufra. The situation there is so pathetic,” said George, a Kenyan national whose family was forced to pay USD 10,000 for his release. “They rent houses — that is the business there. It is trafficking. If you try to escape, others will capture you again for ransom. I am pleading for help because al-Kufra is unreasonable. They are manhandling people and killing people.”

According to George, captors repeatedly called families from different phone numbers to demand payment. Those who resisted faced brutal consequences.

“There was a boy who rebelled — he was beaten and killed. We were told we would be beaten until our people paid the ransom. If they didn’t, they would kill us, abandon us, or throw us into the desert,” he added.

By early 2025, UNSMIL and OHCHR received reports of a sharp increase in rates of human trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence, particularly in the migrants’ branch of al-Daman juvenile prison, where migrant children are held. Five girls, aged between 14 and 17, were raped several times in 2024 and 2025, in al-Kufra trafficking hubs and in Tripoli. Four additional girls from Sudan, aged 12 to 17, also reported attempted rapes in Tripoli and Bir al-Ghanam.

Between June 2024 and November 2025, ten women detained in trafficking hubs reported being sexually abused, trafficked, and witnessing other women and girls being raped.

“I wish I died. It was a journey of hell,” said one Eritrean woman who was detained at a trafficking hub in Tobruk, in eastern Libya, for over six weeks. “Different men raped me many times. Girls as young as 14 were raped daily.”

A different Eritrean woman, who had been previously subjected to genital mutilation, told OHCHR that she and her friend were forcibly cut open by traffickers and subsequently raped, with her friend later dying from bleeding.

Another survivor, who was detained in a hangar, said that armed men would take women at night and subject them to physical and sexual violence, oftentimes in front of others. “I was raped twice in that hangar before my daughters and other migrants. A Sudanese man tried to help me and stop them, but they beat him severely. My daughter was traumatised and is still asking me about that night,” she said.

The joint report urges Libyan authorities to immediately release all individuals who are arbitrarily detained, stop violent and degrading interception practices, and put an end to forced labour and human trafficking. It also calls for effective and transparent mechanisms to ensure accountability for human rights violations and abuses.

Furthermore, the report calls on the international community, including governments and institutions, to carefully review any funding, training, equipment, or cooperation involving Libyan entities accused of human rights violations, to ensure that all support is strictly conditioned to comply with international human rights standards.

“We recommend legal and policy changes to end the entrenched, exploitative business model driving these violations and abuses,” Nagra said. “A key area is accountability — holding security actors, traffickers, and complicit State-affiliated actors responsible. Accountability provides justice to victims and serves as a deterrent to further violations and abuses.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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CIVICUS discusses the genocide case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with Mohammed Nowkhim of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace & Human Rights (ARSPHR), a civil society organisation led by Rohingya people born out of refugee camps in Bangladesh to document atrocities, preserve survivor testimony and advocate for accountability and justice.

Mohammed Nowkhim

What atrocities were committed against Rohingya people and what is being examined in court?

During what were called ‘clearance operations’ in 2017, Myanmar security forces burned entire villages, raped women, killed children and threw them into fires and wells. According to documented reports, over 10,000 people were killed and around 700,000, including me, were forced to flee Myanmar. These were not random acts of violence; they were systematic and targeted attacks aimed at erasing our community.

In 2019, The Gambia, supported by 11 other states, filed a case against Myanmar at the ICJ, accusing it of genocide. Judges are now examining evidence of mass killings, sexual violence, village destruction and forced displacement. They are also reviewing official policies and actions that show intent to destroy Rohingya people as a group, including patterns of violence, coordination by state forces and the systematic denial of basic rights.

This case shows that genocide claims can be examined through law rather than dismissed for political convenience. But for the Rohingya, this is not just a legal process. It represents acknowledgment and a source of hope for present and future generations. After decades of denial and silence, our suffering is being heard at the world’s highest court and recognised in a legal space where truth matters. The hearings can’t erase our wounds, but they can offer some solace and a path towards justice.

What evidence supports the case against Myanmar?

The case was built on years of evidence-gathering. The Gambia relied on extensive material from the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar and United Nations (UN) fact-finding missions, as well as documentation collected over many years by human rights organisations, including Fortify Rights, Human Rights Watch and Rohingya-led groups.

Civil society played a key role when states failed to act. Even when the world looked away, organisations continued to document the truth and refused to let these crimes be erased or rewritten. Long before any court agreed to listen, groups including the ARSPHR were collecting survivor testimonies, documenting violations and carefully preserving evidence, knowing it might one day be used in court. Without that work, much of what happened would have been lost and perpetrators couldn’t have been challenged.

In a way, civil society became the memory of the Rohingya people. Today, this evidence forms part of the case before the ICJ.

Why is accountability so difficult?

Politics often protects perpetrators. Those with power choose stability over justice and shield those responsible for crimes. Myanmar’s authorities continue to deny wrongdoing and refuse to cooperate, which delays justice.

International law also has its limits. Justice moves slowly because ICJ rulings do not automatically lead to consequences. International courts can establish the truth, but they can’t force states to act. Enforcement depends on political will, often through the UN Security Council, where countries such as China and Russia can block action, even when crimes are clear and well documented.

What must happen to ensure justice?

There must be real action. Perpetrators must be held accountable, Rohingya citizenship must be restored and discriminatory laws that enabled genocide must be removed. Any return of refugees must be voluntary, safe and dignified. It can’t happen without international monitoring and guarantees of protection. People can’t be sent back to the same conditions that forced them to flee.

Ultimately, justice is not only about the past, but also about ensuring that future generations of Rohingya can live with rights, safety and dignity. This case is only the beginning. What happens after the judgment will decide whether justice is real or only symbolic.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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Myanmar’s junta tightens its grip CIVICUS Lens 12.Dec.2025
International Court of Justice offers hope of rules-based order CIVICUS Lens 19.May.2025
Myanmar at a crossroads CIVICUS Lens 28.Oct.2024

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CIVICUS speaks to the Business and Human Rights Centre (BHRC) about labour rights abuses in Myanmar’s garment industry since the 2021 military coup.

Myanmar’s garment sector, which employs hundreds of thousands of workers, is in deep crisis. Since the coup, labour protections have collapsed, independent unions have been dismantled and workers who try to organise face intimidation, dismissal and arrest. Inside factories, reports show multiple cases of child labour, forced overtime, harassment, poverty wages and unsafe conditions. At the same time, rising living costs and US tariffs are pushing many workers further into insecurity as factories close and layoffs become more common. Garment workers, most of them women, are trapped between exploitation, repression and a rapidly shrinking industry.

How have conditions inside Myanmar’s garment factories changed since the coup?

Our monitoring between February 2021 and October 2024 shows a sharp rise in both the number and severity of pre-existing labour rights abuses. Since the coup, factory employers have increasingly worked with the military to restrict organising and silence workers. This collaboration has led to threats, arrests and violent attacks against workers. In one case, security forces carried out joint military and police raids on the homes of workers who demanded unpaid wages and limits on overtime.

Factories have also expanded surveillance. Workers report invasive searches, phone confiscation and installation of CCTV inside factories, including near toilets. Employers also force workers to lie during audits. These practices aim to hide abuses and have exacerbated the abuses workers already faced.

What abuses do garment workers suffer in the workplace?

Factories force workers to meet extreme production targets through excessive and often unpaid overtime. Many workers must stay overnight until dawn, often without enough food, water or ventilation, leading to exhaustion and health problems. Managers threaten and abuse workers who refuse to work overtime or fail to meet targets. We have documented a case where supervisors denied workers food and water as punishment for not meeting targets.

Health and safety conditions have worsened. Workers report dirty, insufficient toilets, poor food quality and unsafe drinking water. They’ve also reported blocked emergency exits, inadequate ventilation and leaking roofs that put lives at risk. Factory-provided transport creates further dangers, as they are often overcrowded and suffer frequent road accidents. In one case, a major crash involving a worker shuttle left several workers badly hurt, including one who needed abdominal surgery.

Women workers face particularly severe abuses, including hair-pulling, physical assault, sexual harassment and verbal attacks. In one case, supervisors punched and kicked women workers and called them ‘dogs’.

What happen to workers who try to speak out or organise?

Workers who dare speak out face brutal reprisals. After the military declared 16 labour unions and labour rights organisations illegal, arrests, home raids and surveillance increased, particularly against union leaders and activists linked to the Civil Disobedience Movement. The movement began after the coup and brings together workers who refuse to cooperate with military rule through strikes and other forms of non-violent resistance.

Inside factories, employers threaten and dismiss union leaders on false grounds. In one case, a factory reopened and refused to reinstate union members and publicly humiliated them. Employers have also created Workplace Coordination Committees to replace independent unions, denying workers the right to choose their representatives and silencing their complaints. Prominent union leaders such as Myo Myo Aye have been arrested multiple times simply for continuing to organise.

What should international brands be doing in this context?

Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, brands operating in conflict settings must carry out heightened, conflict-sensitive due diligence and demonstrate, with independent and verifiable evidence, that it works. In Myanmar’s current context, where surveillance and violent repression run through all the supply chain, this standard is exceptionally hard to meet.

Any brand that stays must deliver clear and demonstrable improvements in working conditions. Brands that can’t meet this threshold must carry out a responsible exit, working with workers and their representatives and taking steps to reduce harm, rather than adding to the instability garment workers already face under military rule.

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Myanmar’s junta tightens its grip CIVICUS Lens 12.Dec.2025
Historic wins and hard truths at International Labour Conference CIVICUS Lens 27.Jun.2025
Business and Human Rights Treaty: a decade of struggle for corporate accountability CIVICUS Lens 08.Mar.2025

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Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti and Head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, briefs reporters at UN Headquarters. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 28 2026 (IPS)

As Haiti’s Transitional President Council (TPC) approaches its February 7 expiration date and the country remains without a newly elected president, humanitarian experts warn the nation risks further sliding into insecurity, raising fears of broader collapse.

The United Nations (UN) notes that escalating violence by entrenched armed coalitions, persisting impunity for human rights abuses, political instability, and mass civilian displacement are straining aid operations to their breaking point, leaving millions with dwindling access to essential services and pushing hopes for stability and national self-sufficiency further out of reach.

“Violence has intensified and expanded geographically, exacerbating food insecurity and instability, as transitional governance arrangements near expiry and overdue elections remain urgent,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in his latest report on the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). “Gang violence affects communities nationwide, with particularly devastating consequences for women, children and youth, undermining the country’s social fabric over the long term.”

Currently, it is estimated that armed gangs now exert near-total control over approximately 90 percent of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as large parts of the surrounding provinces, severely undermining government authority and humanitarian operations. Presidential elections have not been held in a decade, and ongoing political instability, coupled with the continual adaptive reshaping of gang networks, has made establishing security increasingly difficult.

Gangs continue to launch coordinated attacks, seize control of critical economic corridors and agricultural areas, and drive mass displacement—exhausting both law enforcement and humanitarian systems. In 2025, Haiti’s murder rate rose by roughly 20 percent compared with the previous year, with Guterres informing reporters that more than 8,100 killings were recorded across Haiti between January and November 2025.

Child trafficking and recruitment have surged, with children and youth now making up roughly 50 percent of all gang members. They are being forced into a range of roles and to participate in violent attacks. Sexual violence – particularly against women and girls- has also escalated sharply, leaving deep and lasting trauma for survivors with limited access to psychosocial support, while perpetrators face widespread impunity.

Approximately 6.4 million people—more than half of Haiti’s population—are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that a record 5.7 million people are currently facing acute hunger, which is expected to rise to 5.9 million by March without prompt intervention. This hunger crisis is largely driven by rampant insecurity across key transport routes and agricultural regions, which has severely disrupted crop production and movement to markets. Food prices remain extremely high and increasingly beyond reach for many households.

Civilians continue to live in overcrowded, unsanitary shelters marked by widespread malnutrition, disease outbreaks, limited access to clean water, and escalating insecurity, with women and children being disproportionately impacted. Additionally, internal displacement has reached record highs, with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimating that roughly 1.4 million Haitians are internally displaced, including over 741,000 children.

At Jean Marie César School, now serving as a displacement site in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, UNICEF continues to provide psychosocial activities to help children cope with trauma. Credit: UNICEF/Herold Joseph

Humanitarian experts remain deeply concerned about the continued adaptive reorganizing and restructuring of gangs to bypass national security measures and expand their influence. John Brandolino, Acting Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has said that gangs have transformed into more structured criminal networks with defined leadership, territorial ambitions, and diversified streams of revenue.

The Viv Ansanm coalition has carried out large-scale attacks on police forces, prisons, and critical economic infrastructure, enabling gangs to tighten their grip over the capital and key corridors into Artibonite and Plateau Central. Extortion, as well as the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and ammunition, have become major sources of revenue, further entrenching gang control and undermining state authority.

Despite this, notable progress has been made in recent months through police operations supported by the UN Security Council-authorized Gang Suppression Force, which was deployed in October 2025. These efforts have yielded significant early results, including the reopening of key roads in parts of Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite Department, as well as the restoration of government presence around the capital’s Champ de Mars. These gains demonstrate that sustained, coordinated pressure on armed groups can weaken gang control and yield meaningful improvements in security.

However, Carlos Ruiz-Massieu, UN Special Representative and Head of BINUH, warned that these gains remain extremely fragile and it is imperative to address the root cause of insecurity—political instability. Haiti currently stands at a precarious crossroads as it nears the end of its TPC, with a newly issued electoral decree and calendar calling for the inauguration of an elected president by early 2027. Despite this, humanitarian experts and civilians have raised concerns on whether such elections are realistically feasible amid the country’s entrenched insecurity.

“Haiti has entered a critical juncture in its process of restoring democratic institutions,” Ruiz Massieu told the Security Council on January 21. “Let us be clear: the country has no time to lose to prolonged internal conflict,” he warned, emphasizing that it is imperative for national stakeholders to set aside differences and uphold their political responsibilities, and maintain momentum on security efforts.

The following day during a press briefing, Ruiz-Massieu emphasized to reporters in New York that improving security conditions is essential for Haitians to have freedom of movement and the ability to participate in society, which paves the way for eventual, credible elections. He stressed that Haiti’s recovery will depend on close cooperation between national authorities and the international community.

“What we need is an authority that can work with the international community and manage the public forces in a way that can really increase security in different areas,” said Ruiz-Massieu. “How you measure success is by improving security in certain areas of Port-au-Prince that can enable Haitians to walk freely, to work freely, and the country to be able to organize elections in a meaningful way. We expect authorities to continue after February 7 and work with the international community to improve security.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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CIVICUS speaks with Belarusian activist, blogger and journalist Mikola Dziadok about his experiences as a two-time political prisoner and the repression of dissent in Belarus. Mikola was jailed following mass protests in 2020.

Mikola Dziadok

Why were you arrested following protests in 2020?

I was arrested because I was not silent and I was visible. During the 2020 uprising, I ran Telegram and YouTube channels where I shared political analysis, explained what was happening and gave people advice on how to resist repression. I talked about strategies to protect ourselves, counter state violence and survive under authoritarian pressure. The regime viewed this as extremely threatening.

By that time, I had around 17 years of experience in the anarchist movement, which is a part of a broader democratic movement in Belarus. But most people who joined the protests weren’t political at all: they’d never protested before, never faced repression, never dealt with police violence. They were desperate for guidance, particularly as there was an information war between regime propaganda, pro-Kremlin narratives and independent voices..

Authorities made a clear distinction between ‘ordinary people’ who apologised and promised never to protest again, who were released, and activists, organisers and others who spoke publicly, who were treated as enemies. I was imprisoned because I belonged to the second category.

What sparked the 2020 uprising?

By 2020, Belarus had already lived through five fraudulent elections. We only had one election the international community recognised as legitimate, held in 1994. After that, President Alexander Lukashenko changed the constitution so he could rule indefinitely.

For many years, people believed there was nothing they could do to make change happen. But in 2020, several things came together. The COVID-19 pandemic left the state’s complete failure exposed. As authorities did nothing to protect people, civil society stepped in. Grassroots initiatives provided information and medical help. People suddenly saw they could do what the state couldn’t. From the regime’s perspective, this was a very dangerous realisation.

But what truly ignited mass mobilisation was violence. In the first two days after the 9 August presidential election, over 7,000 protesters were detained. Thousands were beaten, humiliated, sexually abused and tortured. When they were released and showed their injuries, the images spread through social media and Telegram, and people were shocked. This brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets, protesting against both election fraud and violence against protesters.

What’s the situation of political prisoners?

Since 2020, over 50,000 people have spent time in detention, in a country of only nine million. There have been almost 4,000 officially recognised political prisoners, and there are now around 1,200, although the real number is higher. Many prisoners ask not to be named publicly because they fear retaliation against themselves or their families.

Repression has never subsided. Civil society organisations, human rights groups and independent media have been destroyed or forced into exile. Belarussians live under constant pressure, not a temporary crackdown.

Political prisoners are treated much worse than regular prisoners. I spent 10 years as a political prisoner: five years between 2010 and 2015, and another five years after 2020. During my second sentence, I spent two and a half years in solitary confinement. This is deliberate torture designed to break people physically and psychologically.

How did your release happen?

My release was a political transaction. Lukashenko has always used political prisoners as bargaining chips. He arrests people, waits for international pressure to reach its peak and then offers releases in exchange for concessions. This time, international negotiations, unexpectedly involving the USA, triggered a limited release.

The process itself was terrifying. I was taken suddenly from prison, handcuffed, hooded and transferred to the KGB prison in the centre of Minsk. I was placed in an isolation cell and not told what would happen. It was only when I saw other well-known political prisoners being brought into the same space that I realised we were going to be freed, most likely by forced expulsion.

No formal conditions were announced, but our passports were confiscated and we were forced into exile. We were transported under armed guard and handed over at the Lithuanian border. Many deportees still fear for relatives who remain in the country, because repression often continues through family members. That’s why I asked my wife to leave Belarus as quickly as possible.

What should the international community and civil society do now?

First, they should make sure Belarus continues receiving international attention. Lukashenko is afraid of isolation, sanctions and scrutiny. Any attempt to normalise relations with Belarus without real change will only strengthen repression and put remaining prisoners at greater risk.

Second, they should financially support independent Belarusian human rights organisations and media. Many are struggling to survive, particularly after recent funding cuts. Without them doing their job, abuses will remain hidden and prisoners will be forgotten.

Most importantly, activists should not lose hope. We are making history. Dictatorships fall and fear eventually breaks. Freedom always returns – but only if we hold fast to our values and sustain the struggle.

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‘Belarus is closer than ever to totalitarianism, with closed civic space and repression a part of daily life’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Human Rights House 14.Oct.2025
Belarus: ‘The work of human rights defenders in exile is crucial in keeping the democratic movement alive’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Natallia Satsunkevich 15.Feb.2025
Belarus: a sham election that fools no one CIVICUS Lens 31.Jan.2025

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The International Court of Justice holds public hearings on the merits of the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar: 11 States intervening) at the Peace Palace in The Hague. Credit: UN Web TV

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2026 (IPS)

On January 12, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), opened landmark hearings in a case brought by the Republic of The Gambia, alleging that Myanmar’s military committed acts of brutal genocide against the Rohingya minority during its 2017 crackdown. Described by the United Nations (UN) as a case “years in the making,” the ICJ will spend the next three weeks reviewing evidence and testimony from both sides to determine whether the Myanmar military violated the Genocide Convention.

This case marks the first genocide case fully undertaken by the ICJ in over a decade, filed by The Gambia in 2019, two years after the Myanmar military’s 2017 crackdown —which resulted in thousands of deaths and mass displacement. UN experts note that the outcome of this case could have implications far beyond Myanmar, potentially shaping other international legal proceedings such as South Africa’s petition accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and helping to define standards of evidence for genocide in contexts like Darfur in Sudan and Tigray in Ethiopia.

“The case is likely to set critical precedents for how genocide is defined and how it can be proven, and how violations can be remedied,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, told reporters.

Since 2017, Rohingya survivors have described the brutality of the Myanmar military’s attacks and their enduring impacts, recounting widespread instances of rape, arson, and mass killings. The violence displaced more than 750,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh, where resources are scarce and refugees continue to face discrimination and long-term psychological trauma.

Shortly after the 2017 crackdown, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, described the Myanmar military’s operations as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. A 2018 UN fact-finding mission concluded that the military’s operations included “genocidal acts”. Myanmar authorities rejected these characterizations, claiming the crackdown was a response to Rohingya armed groups.

On January 12, The Gambia’s Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told the ICJ that after reviewing “credible reports of the most brutal and vicious violations imaginably inflicted upon a vulnerable group”, Gambia officials concluded that the Myanmar military deliberately targeted the Rohingya minority in an attempt to “destroy the community”.

“It is not about esoteric issues of international law. It is about real people, real stories, and a real group of human beings—the Rohingya of Myanmar,” Jallow told ICJ judges. He added that the Rohingya have endured decades of “appalling persecution and years of dehumanizing propaganda,” aimed at effectively erasing their existence in Myanmar.

On January 14, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement rejecting The Gambia’s allegations of genocide as “flawed and unfounded in fact and law,” claiming they rely on biased reports and “unreliable evidence.” The statement notably avoided the term Rohingya, referring instead to the community as “persons from Rakhine State.” It also asserted that Myanmar is cooperating with the ICJ proceedings in “good faith”, framing this as a demonstration of its respect for international law.

Lawyers for Myanmar are expected to begin presenting their arguments to the ICJ on January 16. UN officials note that after three weeks of testimony, a final ICJ ruling could take months or even years, and would be legally binding. If Myanmar were to be found guilty of genocide, such a ruling would place state responsibility on Myanmar, designating it as a “pariah state” and severely damaging its international standing.

Such a ruling could compel the UN Security Council to take more forceful peacekeeping measures and could trigger obligations under the Genocide Convention (of which Myanmar is a state party), to prevent further atrocities, punish perpetrators, and provide reparations to victims, which may include enabling conditions for a safe, dignified, and voluntary return. Even as the case proceeds, the ICJ’s existing provisional measures already require Myanmar to protect the Rohingya community and preserve evidence, though enforcement depends on Myanmar’s compliance.

“Seeing Gambia’s landmark case against Myanmar finally enter the merits phase delivers renewed hope to Rohingya that our decades-long suffering may finally end,” said Wai Wai Nu, founder and executive director of the Women’s Peace Network, a human rights group advocating for marginalized communities in Myanmar. “Amid ongoing violations against the Rohingya, the world must stand firm in the pursuit of justice and a path toward ending impunity in Myanmar and restoring our rights.”

As legal proceedings continue, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and displaced communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State are confronting an escalating humanitarian crisis in 2026, marked by severe shortages of essential services and heightened protection risks. According to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over one million Rohingya refugees who fled violence in Myanmar are now living in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar settlement, one of the largest refugee camps in the world.

Recent humanitarian updates from UNHCR show that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh continue to live in severely overcrowded shelters with limited access to food, healthcare, education, clean water, and sanitation. Livelihood opportunities remain sharply restricted, as Rohingya refugees are considered stateless. Shelter for newly arrived refugees is increasingly scarce and conditions continue to deteriorate as funding cuts hinder UNHCR’s ability to adequately support affected communities.

Meanwhile, Rohingya civilians who remain in Myanmar’s Rakhine State continue to endure entrenched discrimination, severe movement restrictions, persistent insecurity, and shrinking humanitarian access as clashes between armed groups and the military intensify. Humanitarian experts and civil society leaders underscored the significance of the ICJ case, noting that a ruling in favor of The Gambia could mark a critical step toward justice and long-term recovery for the Rohingya community.

“I hope the ICJ will bring some solace to the deep wounds we are still carrying,” said Mohammad Sayed Ullah, a member of the United Council of Rohingya (UCR), a civil society organization formed in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, that advocates for the rights of Rohingya refugees. “The perpetrators must be held accountable and punished. The sooner and fairer the trial is, the better the outcome will be. Only then can the repatriation process truly begin.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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