Articles

Women across the world face unacceptable mistreatment during childbirth, according to a new study from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Human Reproduction Programme (HRP) launched on Wednesday. The new supplement, Dignity and respect in maternity care, spotlights how women and their newborn babies are treated during childbirth and offers a path to improved facility-based care. Human rights issue Advancing that mistreatment of “pregnant women, adolescent girls, and persons, as...

Originally published on state.gov To mark the conclusion of the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and UN Women announced a partnership for ‘Investing in Adolescent Girls and Young Women’s Leadership and Voice in the HIV Response’. The United States government is investing over USD 670,000 for the 12-month partnership, which focuses on elevating the voices of adolescent girls and young women in Sub-Saharan...

Speech: Agreement on action for a just, safe and sustainable planet [As delivered] Let me begin by giving you all a big hand for all the energy, enthusiasm, optimism and resilience that you have shown in the last few days to get us to this point – the Agreed Conclusions of the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. You kept your eyes on the prize, and you got it. True, it is late at night, but we got it. This is the power of the multilateral system and the strength of the...

(New York, 25 March – The 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66)—the second largest UN intergovernmental meeting in New York—closed its two-week long session today (14 to 25 March) acknowledging the important role of women and girls as agents of change for sustainable development, in particular safeguarding the environment and addressing the adverse effects of climate change. The agreed conclusions adopted by Member States are a blueprint for world leaders to promote...

The poster shows a tiny girl with braided hair, tied at the end with pink ribbons. Her face droops in despair as she walks next to an older man. The garlands around their necks indicate that they have just been wed. She holds a little blackboard in her hand, with the first letters of the Hindi alphabet on it, a sign that she would rather be in school. The next image shows another life for the girl: she is grinning happily, dressed for school, and sitting next to her smiling mother. The...

Farmers, especially women and indigenous people, work tirelessly to put food on our tables. UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed met on Saturday women producers at a farmers’ market in Circo Massimo, Rome, ahead of the Food Systems Pre-Summit taking place next week. Dozens of stalls were set up in the vicinity of the UN event’s venue, where heads of state and delegates will gather from Monday to discuss ways to transform food systems to tackle hunger, poverty, climate change and...

Some one thousand victims of human trafficking have been identified in Burundi since 2017, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). Elisabeth (not her real name) is one of the lucky ones. She survived the ordeal and received assistance from IOM to return home to Burundi. She told her story for the first time to IOM staff, ahead of World Day Against Trafficking in Persons which is marked annually on 30 July. “My parents separated before I was born, and my mum...

Pierangela Sierra set up an e-commerce platform in Ecuador called Tipti to make shopping easier but also to save people time. Ms. Sierra spent the better part of her career working for prominent international corporations across Latin-America, becoming a renowned marketing expert. A few years ago, she decided to retire from the corporate world to embark on a ground-breaking venture alongside her partner. Together, they hatched a plan that would give them back what they lacked the most...

With Taliban fighters continuing to gain ground in Afghanistan, the UN Secretary-General is following events “with deep concern” said the UN Spokesperson on Thursday, including the battle for Herat and Kandahar, the country’s second and third largest cities. “We are particularly concerned about the shift of fighting to urban areas, where the potential for civilian harm is even greater”, Stéphane Dujarric told correspondents at UN Headquarters in New York. The militant group ruled...

Secretary-General António Guterres described Sima Sami Bahous of Jordan, as “a champion for women and girls”, announcing on Monday her appointment to lead the UN’s gender equality and empowerment entity, UN Women. The UN chief said she would also champion gender equality and youth empowerment, as well as being a “keen advocate for quality education, poverty alleviation and inclusive governance”. Ms. Bahous brings to the job more than 35 years of leadership experience at the grassroots...