Gender Violence

International Women’s Day, 2022
Girls’ Education Must Come First

By Yasmine Sherif
For decades now, world leaders have talked about ending hunger and poverty and building a new world order based on human rights and gender-equality.

International Women’s Day, 2022
War, Want, Weather and Wellbeing: Where Are We Now?

By Lesley Ann Foster

 

WAR The world is currently facing a devastating war with dire prospects for our global security. Men are waging this war while women seek peace and security for their families, communities and our global society. Women are give birth and nurture while some men actively seek death and destruction. This is one of the fundamental differences between the sexes which underpins patriarchy and generates inequality on many levels. Women and girls bear the brunt of this unbalanced approach to life.

International Women’s Day, 2022
To be Just, the Energy Transition Must Include & Empower Women

By Lucia Cortina
Access to clean energy improves women’s lives in a myriad of ways. It supports access to education and quality healthcare, opens new economic opportunities, and reduces unpaid domestic labour and gender-based violence. Yet too often, the sector as a whole – from industry to policymaking – still fails to include women as energy users, decision-makers and agents of change of the energy transition.

International Women’s Day, 2022
Sexual Violence Laws are Failing Adolescents

By Jacqui Hunt
At Equality Now, we have been on a years-long journey to track and analyze sexual violence laws and their implementation around the world. This work was born after working with survivors of sexual violence for over two decades and observing that women and girls reported similar barriers to justice regardless of where they were from.

International Women’s Day, 2022
Women Demanding Justice & Peace in the Streets of Myanmar

By May Sabe Phyu
This will be the second International Women’s Day since the brutal coup erupted in Myanmar – and women remain fiercely in the lead in demanding justice and peace in the streets and behind closed doors.

International Women’s Day, 2022
Collective Solutions to Improve Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights in Climate Action

By Ayomide Oluseye and Gabriela Fernando
The devastating effects of climate change continue to disproportionately affect women and girls in the poorest regions, who have contributed the least to global warming.

Power of Connection & Collaborations to Fight Modern-day Slavery

By Sania Farooqui
The Covid-19 pandemic affected countries and people globally, at the same time exacerbated vulnerabilities such as modern-day slavery. There are over 40.3 million people estimated to be in modern-day slavery, and certain population groups, sectors and geographies such as children, migrant workers, women and girls that were already vulnerable, became more vulnerable to recruitment and exploitation during the pandemic. The United Nations has called the pandemic more than a health crisis, “it is an economic crisis, a humanitarian crisis, and a human rights crisis.”

Long-haul SADC Action Needed to Counter Mozambican Insurgency and Humanitarian Crisis

By Kevin Humphrey
Ongoing insecurity and an unfolding humanitarian crisis in northern Mozambique need a strategically planned response to deal decisively with the insurgency that has plagued the area since October 2017.

Increased Investment Critical to End Female Genital Mutilation as COVID-19 Rages On

By Catherine Russell and Natalia Kanem
“Multiple overlapping crises are putting millions of girls at increased risk of female genital mutilation. “Countries already grappling with rising poverty, inequality and conflict are seeing the COVID-19 pandemic further threaten years of progress to end the practice, creating a crisis within a crisis for the world’s most vulnerable and marginalized girls.

Human Trafficking, Rape, Extortion Behind ‘Forced Conversions’, say Experts

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Two years after Michelle, 15, was kidnapped, sold, forced to convert to Islam and married to a stranger, relatives still ostracise her.

Kenyan Domestic Workers’ Doomed Voyages to the Gulf

By Joyce Chimbi
Distress calls from vulnerable Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia experiencing mistreatment and torture at the hands of their employers went from 88 in 2019/2020 to 1,025 just one year later.

Discriminatory Sexual Violence Laws in Latin America Stigmatize Adolescent Victims of Abuse

By Barbara Jimenez-Santiago
Across Latin America and the Caribbean there is a culture of impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence. Crimes against women and girls often go unpunished and under-reported due to societal misconceptions about victimhood and the nature of sex crimes.

Once Tossed and Abused, Human Trafficking Survivor Finds Solace

By Mehru Jaffer
For over two decades, Nina tossed around like a leaf in a storm. While a teenager, she was lured into the sex trade, and pimps kept a huge chunk of the money that she earned as a sex slave. Nina was often bruised. Once, she refused sex with a man who did not want to use a condom. He beat her so severely that she had found it difficult to breathe.

2021: Yet Another Challenging Year in Review

In 2020, 1.8 million people across the world died from COVID-19. At the end of 2021 the death toll has risen to over 5.3 million.

Women’s Rights Groups Welcome New Legal Protections Against Sexual Violence in the Maldives, including Marital Rape

By Divya Srinivasan and Humaida Abdulghafoor
Marital rape has now been criminalized without exception in the Maldives, as part of a raft of significant amendments to the Sexual Offences Act (2014). The First Amendment to the Sexual Offences Act was ratified on 6 December 2021 by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

Trafficked and Trapped in Libya: A Nigerian Woman’s Story

By Sam Olukoya
Miriam* hoped for a better life in Europe. Instead, her journey ended in Libya, where, double-crossed by traffickers she was raped and abused.  She has returned to Nigeria and shared her experiences with Sam Olukoya.

Open Letter to the Secretary General, Heads of UN Agencies & International Donor Community

By Rebecca Reichmann Tavares, Roberta Clarke and Meryem Aslan
We are former UN officials with decades of combined experience supporting international civil society and governments to advance the rights of women and girls.

Q&A: Femicides, Domestic Violence and Online Violence Have Been Exacerbated

By Mariela Jara
"The level of injustice in the world cannot go on like this…I am not pessimistic about the future," said Gladys Acosta, president of the CEDAW Committee, in an interview with IPS in the Peruvian capital.

ECW Joins Call to Action on Protection from Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies: Global Community Urged to Orange the World and End Gender-Based Violence Now

By Joyce Chimbi
The statistics are dire: One in three women have experienced a form of gender-based violence in their lifetime, be it sexual violence, physical violence, or child marriage. The message is clear: Women and girls deserve a safer, brighter future – free from gender-based violence.

A Call to End the Cycle of Discrimination and Exclusion of Iraqi Women

By Amal Kabashi
As a feminist activist and defender of women’s rights in Iraq, I would like to share with you my growing concerns about the assassinations, kidnappings, assaults, threats of assassination against and defamation of feminist activists and human rights defenders, which they have faced especially during the popular protests in October 2019–2020, all of which have occurred with impunity.

Refugee Voices Matter – Nothing about Us, Without Us

By Anila Noor, Eliasib Amet Herrera and Shaza Alrihawi
Over the past two years, the global refugee response has been tested. The world is being rocked by the greatest pandemic in over a century, while waves of refugees have fled from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Belarus, and Tigray. So, where do we go from here? Next week, the international community will convene to take stock of the successes and shortcomings of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), a unique multilateral mechanism built to ensure the protection of one of the most vulnerable populations. This marquee Compact is up for review, but unlike other review processes, the participation of the people whose lives are shaped by the decisions to be made in the review process will be marginal. Unfortunately, only 1 in 50 of the invited attendees at the UNHCR High-Level Official’s Meeting (HLOM) to discuss the GCR are refugees.
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