Gender

Talent Wasted: Afghanistan’s Educated Women Adapt Under Taliban Restrictions

Young women in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, are trying their hands at unfamiliar tasks in embroidery, tailoring and designing beads in market stalls. Many should instead have been sitting at desks writing computer software or reporting news, the fields they trained for.

‘Since the Coup, Factory Employers Have Increasingly Worked with the Military to Restrict Organising and Silence Workers’

By CIVICUS

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

Haiti at a Crossroads: Political Uncertainty and Gang Control Push Nation Toward Collapse

By Oritro Karim
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.

Binalakshmi Nepram: Engineering Peace, Creating History

By Kumkum Chadha
It was Christmas eve: some two decades ago. Binalakshmi Nepram was a witness to the killing of a 27-year-old. In utter disbelief, she saw a group of three men dragging the victim from his workshop. Within minutes, he was shot dead.

‘Freedom Always Returns – but Only If We Hold Fast to Our Values and Sustain the Struggle’

By CIVICUS

 
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.

The UN’s Withering Vine: A US Retreat from Global Governance

By Jordan Ryan

 
The Trump administration’s recent announcement of its withdrawal from 66 international organisations has been met with a mixture of alarm and applause. While the headline number suggests a dramatic retreat from the world stage, a closer look reveals a more nuanced, and perhaps more insidious, strategy. The move is less a wholesale abandonment of the United Nations system and more a targeted pruning of the multilateral vine, aimed at withering specific branches of global cooperation that the administration deems contrary to its interests. While the immediate financial impact may be less than feared, the long-term consequences for the UN and the rules-based international order are profound.

Jailed by the Generals She Defended as ICJ Opens Genocide Case Against Myanmar

By Guy Dinmore
Held incommunicado in grim prison conditions for nearly five years, Aung San Suu Kyi quite possibly does not even know that this week the International Court of Justice (ICJ) opened a landmark case charging Myanmar with committing genocide against its Rohingya minority a decade ago.

ICJ Begins Proceedings for Rohingya Genocide Allegations Case Against Myanmar

By Oritro Karim
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.

What Next? United States Exits Key Entities, Vital Climate Treaties in Major Retreat from Global Cooperation

By Joyce Chimbi
President Donald Trump has escalated efforts to further distance the United States from international organizations and entities focused on climate, the environment, and energy. This strategy is in step with his administration’s established approach to undermine and redirect funds and international cooperation away from climate and clean energy programs.

Gaza: Physicians Call For Unimpeded Aid To Restore Reproductive Healthcare

By Ed Holt
Israel must lift all restrictions on medicine, food and aid coming into Gaza, rights groups have demanded, as two reports released today (Jan 14) document how maternal and reproductive healthcare have been all but destroyed in the country.

United States Withdrawal From Organizations Triggers Global Alarm

By Oritro Karim
President Donald Trump's executive order to stop United States support for 66 international organizations, including 31 United Nations (UN) groups, has faced strong opposition from these organizations, the global community, humanitarian experts, and climate advocates, who are concerned about the negative effects on global cooperation, sustainable development, and international peace and security.

Consent Ignored, Convictions Rare: Pakistan’s Courts Under Fire

By Zofeen Ebrahim
As 2026 dawns, women in Pakistan are left grappling with a stark reality: rape and marital rape continue to be misinterpreted by judges in the country’s highest courts.

Online Abuse is Real Violence — and Africa’s Women and Girls are Paying the Price

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

Maternal Deaths Spike in War-Torn Ukraine

By Ed Holt
“It was an emergency caesarean section when the life of the pregnant woman was at risk. We did the operation with just flashlights and no water, and against a backdrop of constant explosions,” says Dr Oleksandr Zhelezniakov, Director of the Obstetrics Department at Kharkiv Regional Clinical Hospital, in eastern Ukraine.

Sudan’s Crisis: Mass Killings Continue While the World Looks Away

By Andrew Firmin
Satellite images show corpses piled high in El Fasher, North Darfur, awaiting mass burial or cremation as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia tries to cover up the scale of its crimes. Up to 150,000 El Fasher residents remain missing from the city, seized by the RSF in November. The lowest estimate is that 60,000 are dead. The Arab militia has ethnically cleansed the city of its non-Arab residents. The slaughter is the latest horrific episode in the war between the RSF and the Sudan Armed Forces, sparked by a power battle between military leaders in April 2023.

Living with nature, the climate lesson from Brazil’s caatinga

By Mario Osava
“The work of collecting seeds saved me from depression,” caused by her daughter's suicide at the age of 29, said Maria do Desterro Soares, 64, who lives in the poor rural community of Jatobá in northeastern Brazil.

The Fight Against Femicide: Victories and Setbacks in 2025

By Inés M. Pousadela
Hours before world leaders gathered in Johannesburg for the 2025 G20 summit in November, hundreds of South African women wearing black lay down in a city park for 15 minutes — one for each woman who loses her life every day to gender-based violence in the country. The striking visual protest was organised by a civil society organisation, Women for Change, which also gathered over a million signatures demanding the government declare gender-based violence (GBV) a national disaster. Hours later, the government acquiesced.

The Bitter Sweet Future of Cocoa Showcased During COP30, Belém

By Tanka Dhakal
Izete dos Santos Costa, also known as Dona Nena among locals in Combu Island, welcomed hundreds of people from around the world during the recent climate conference in Belém. Her team showcased local crafts and chocolate-making processes in the land of the Amazon rainforest—far from the deafening air conditioner sounds at the Parque da Cidade, where the COP30 negotiations were ongoing.

A Grim Year for Democracy and Civic Freedoms – but in Gen Z There Is Hope

By Mandeep S.Tiwana
2025 has been a terrible year for democracy. Just over 7 per cent of the world’s population now live in places where the rights to organise, protest and speak out are generally respected, according to the CIVICUS Monitor, a civil society research partnership that measures civic freedoms around the world. This is a sharp drop from over 14 per cent this time last year.

‘From the Moment They Enter Libya, Migrants Risk Being Arbitrarily Arrested, Tortured and Killed’

By CIVICUS
CIVICUS discusses migrants’ rights in Libya with Sarra Zidi, political scientist and researcher for HuMENA, an international civil society organisation (CSO) that advances democracy, human rights and social justice across the Middle East and North Africa.

The World’s Right-Handed and Left-Handed Torturers

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