Gender

Pakistan’s Free Healthcare Insurance Benefits Women, Poor

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
A free health insurance initiative started in Pakistan has benefited poor patients, especially women who have outnumbered men in using the cashless health services under the Sehat Card Plus programme. "The initiative is in line with the ICPD25 Programme of Action, under which 4.5 million people have received free services, with 62 percent of them women. In the last three years, we have been able to cut down maternal mortality rate from 186 deaths per 100,000 live births to 172," Dr Muhammad Riaz Tanoli, CEO of the Sehat Card Plus (SCP), told IPS.

Taking a Stance on Feminists’ Prejudice Against Religious Minority Women

By Mariz Tadros
Since researching the experiences of gender discrimination against women in poverty who belong to religious minorities, many fellow feminists have turned their back on me.

Venezuela: The End of Civil Society as We Know It?

By Inés M. Pousadela
In late January, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, finished an official visit to Venezuela. He said he’d found a fragmented society in great need of bridging its divides and encouraged the government to take the lead in listening to civil society concerns and responding to victims of rights violations.

Driven by the War, Russian Women Arrive en Masse to Give Birth in Argentina

By Daniel Gutman
They began to arrive en masse in Argentina in the second half of 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They are pregnant Russian women who land in the capital to give birth, with the hope of gaining an Argentine passport, given the fact that so many countries refuse to let in people with Russian passports today.

Sierra Leone’s Gender Law Boosts Women’s Participation in Politics, Business

By Francis Kokutse
Sierra Leone's new gender equality law will benefit women with political aspirations – as well as stimulate development, say analysts.

Pakistan Floods: Need for Tackling Development from a Different Perspective

By Shiraz Ali Shah and Khusrav Sharifov
Last year’s devastating floods in Pakistan cost the country more than US$30 billion, about 6.4 trillion rupees. The entire Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for 2021-2022 was valued at 900 billion rupees. This means that the floods wiped out development gains worth more than six PSDPs. This disproportionately affects the vulnerable segments of society, especially women, girls, the elderly and persons with disabilities.

Rigidity and Tolerance within the Vatican

By Jan Lundius
When the Pope Emeritus Benedict XIV/Ratzinger died on the last day of 2022 it did not cause much of a stir in the global newsfeed. Maybe a sign that religion has ceased to play a decisive role in modern society Nevertheless, religious hierarchies are still highly influential, not least for the world’s 1, 4 billion baptized Catholics, and a pope’s policies have a bearing not only on morals, but also on political and economic issues. By contrast, there are more Muslims in the world, 1.9 billion, though adherents are not so centrally controlled and supervised as Catholics and hierarchies do not have a comparable influence on global affairs.

Global Leaders Urge Participation in High-Level Financing Conference to Fund Education for 222 Million Crisis-Impacted Children

By Joyce Chimbi
The world is in the throng of a monumental, damaging, and unprecedented global education crisis. Wars, protracted conflict, extreme climate changes, hunger, COVID-19, and economic uncertainties are pushing children out of the education system.

Senior UN Leaders Show Their Support to Afghan Women and Girls, Urge Taliban to Reverse Their Bans

By Naureen Hossain
Recent visits to Afghanistan by senior-led UN delegations underscore the urgency to protect the rights of women and girls, including their access to humanitarian aid and their right to work.

On International Day of Education, We Must Prioritize Girls in Humanitarian Crisis

By Yasmine Sherif and Stephen Omollo
“Is it a sin to be a girl? We don’t want to be at home and illiterate. We want to go to school, study and be intelligent.” In just a few words, this plea for education from a young Afghan girl has captured the world’s attention. Her heartbreaking question shows how the Taliban’s recent ban on girls attending secondary school and university – effectively ending education opportunities for all Afghan girls and women – is not only violating their fundamental human right to education but shattering countless hopes and dreams in an instant. [related_articles]

Delivering On Our Promise of Universal Education

As we mark the International Day of Education, world leaders must make good on their promise of providing quality education for all by 2030. Education is our investment in peace where there is war, our investment in equality where there is injustice, our investment in prosperity where there is poverty.

Taking Humanitarianism Hostage – the Case of Afghanistan & Multilateral Organisations

By Chloe Bryer, Azza Karam, Ruth Messinger and Negina Yari
Can you imagine what it would be like if women were simply not allowed to step outside of their homes, let alone to work for a living? When women choose to do so, and they can afford it, then it is a matter of choice. When women mostly cannot, as is the case in Afghanistan now, not only is half the population imprisoned, but children go hungry, and communities sink deeper into poverty.

African Parliamentarians Strongly Committed to Population and Development

By Cecilia Russell
Many Ghanian Members of Parliament (MPs) champion adolescent reproductive health rights to stop the practice of child marriage, which is prevalent in some areas of the country even though the country’s Constitution and Children’s Act outlaw it, Dr Rashid Pelpuo (MP) told IPS in an exclusive interview.

Women Commuters Travel Safe in Innovative Bus Scheme in Pakistan

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
A bus rapid transport (BRT) system in Peshawar is benefiting female students and working women by providing a safe journey – something women passengers could not take for granted on regular public transport.

Africa’s Maternal Deaths Need Urgent Action to Meet SDG Goals

By Francis Kokutse
As the effects of COVID-19 on Africa’s health sector become clearer, it looks the continent will need to take urgent steps to overcome the disruptions suffered in the breakdown in antenatal and postnatal care for women and newborns and neonatal intensive care units. The pandemic brought some setbacks to the gains achieved in maternal mortality over the past decade.

All Girls Must be Allowed to Return to Education in Afghanistan

By Yasmine Sherif
Education Cannot Wait stands in solidarity with every girl and woman in Afghanistan. Each one has an inherent human right to education. We also stand in solidarity with every Afghan father, brother, husband and son, suffering the pain of seeing their daughter, sister, wife and mother brutally denied their right to an education.

War, Famine, Disease, Disasters – 2022 – a Year Staring at Apocalypse

By Farhana Haque Rahman
A year that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is ending with famine in Africa, while still spreading death and misery through an enduring pandemic and a deteriorating climate crisis -- 2022 has been an apocalyptic warning of the frailty of our planet and the woeful shortcomings of humankind.

The Trap: A Journey from Afghanistan to Europe

By Sara Perria
Maliha looks confident in a café in Athens as she tells the story of her journey from Afghanistan to Europe. But as she starts recounting how a smuggler assaulted her in Turkey two years ago, she pauses, looking the other way and fiddling with her loose hair.

Raising the Alarm on the Slow Pace of Family Law Reform

By Hyshyama Hamin
In September 2021, in the midst of a pandemic-related lockdown, a 15-year-old Muslim girl from Colombo, Sri Lanka was married off by her relatives to a much older man.

Gender Parity at the UN Willfully Ignores the Facts

By Sanam Naraghi Anderlini
There are two sides to the problem of Gender Parity at the United Nations. On the one hand, member states need to appoint more women to their senior ambassadorial ranks. There is always tremendous competition for the post of UN ambassador, especially if a member state is on the UN security Council.

Gender Inequality: A Question of Power in a Male-Dominated World, Declares UN Chief

By Thalif Deen
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has singled out Gender Parity as one of his key priorities in his second term in office, beginning 2023. Describing it as “a strategic goal of the Organization,” he pointed out some of the “notable advances achieved in the past five years.”
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