Women
- Damilola Banjo
- • January 6, 2023

Margot Wallstrom, who chairs the Women’s Forum on Afghanistan, is asking the United Nations Security Council to pay an urgent visit to the Taliban-controlled country. Wallstrom, who was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2014 to 2019, addressed her request…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Security Council, Women
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • January 5, 2023

António Guterres has finished the first year of his second five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations. During his original term, from 2017-2022, he publicly avowed to bring gender parity to the UN. Recently, speaking on the fifth…
- Categories: Secretary-General, Women
- Kourosh Ziabari
- • December 1, 2022

The United States wants Iran kicked off the United Nations body mandated since 1946 to empower women and promote gender equality. Through a request to hold a vote in the UN’s Economic and Social Council on Dec. 14, the…
- Categories: Asia, Gender Violence, Human Rights, US-UN Relations, Women
- Nyasha Bhobo
- • October 17, 2022

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — When news that a mob of men raped eight young women last summer during a music-video production set in an abandoned mining site in Krugersdorp, Sipehle wasn’t optimistic that the culprits would be prosecuted….
- Categories: Africa, Gender Violence, Women
- Stephanie Liechtenstein
- • October 1, 2022

VIENNA — Margot Wallstrom, a former Swedish foreign minister, clinched her reputation in 2014 for boldly coining the concept of the world’s first “feminist foreign policy.” While having left active politics only five years later, in 2019, she remains…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Nuclear Disarmament, Peace and Security, Women
- Damilola Banjo
- • August 23, 2022

LAGOS — A mere 17 women were appointed or elected to parliaments, ministerial or electoral offices in the West Africa/Sahel region out of 134 available positions from December 2021 to June 2022. While the paltry figures have long raised…
- Categories: Africa, Secretary-General, Women
- Dawn Clancy
- • August 8, 2022

WARSAW, Poland — Olena’s journey begins in the smoldering shadow of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, but whether her escape to safety will end in a suburb of Warsaw, Poland, or thousands of miles away in Dublin,…
- Categories: Humanitarian Aid, Peace and Security, Refugees, Women
- Damilola Banjo
- • June 15, 2022

Despite 100 countries enacting national plans to carry out the global women, peace and security agenda, women remain largely absent from conflict mediation and other peacemaking endeavors across the world. The agenda, cemented in a Security Council resolution approved…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Secretary-General, Security Council, Women
- Asila Wardak
- • June 13, 2022

Over the last 20 years, the United States and other global powers pumped money and military aid into Afghanistan, only to see it disappear when militarism proved untenable and ineffective. Now, as Afghanistan endures a state of emergency, those…
- Categories: Asia, Gender Violence, Human Rights, Secretary-General, Security Council, Women
- Ellen Marshall  and David Harwood
- • June 5, 2022

Adrienne Germain, who helped shape international development and women’s rights for more than four decades, died on May 19, 2022, at her home in Oakland, Calif. She was 75 years old. Her passionate advocacy on behalf of the sexual…
- Categories: Health and Population, Women
- Maurizio Guerrero
- • May 4, 2022

Xiomara Castro, Honduras’s first woman president, is brandishing an ambitious agenda whose top priorities include reforming the Constitution and elevating women’s rights. Yet the success of Castro, a 62-year-old former first lady, depends heavily on how well she manages…
- Categories: Caribbean, Gender Violence, Latin America, Migration, Women
- Damilola Banjo
- • April 27, 2022

CALABAR, Nigeria — In March 2020, when schools in Nigeria closed their doors to flatten the surging curve of coronavirus infection, the unintended consequence was that thousands of children and teenagers across the country became soft targets of sexual…
- Mikaela Conley
- • March 22, 2022

BERLIN — During her final visit to the United States last year as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel was asked about her plans for when she stepped down as her country’s leader in December.
“Maybe I will try to read something,”…
- Categories: Peace and Security, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • March 2, 2022

Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia, a small Baltic nation with a tragic history of living with Russia, has become a leading European voice demanding that no breathing space or second chances be given to Vladimir Putin as his…
- Categories: Peace and Security, Women
- Mikaela Conley
- • February 14, 2022

BERLIN — The number of countries declaring they are carrying out a feminist foreign policy is quickly increasing throughout the world, with Spain, France, Canada, Mexico, Luxembourg, Libya and now Germany joining Sweden’s pioneering concept, declaring that the countries’…
- Categories: Geopolitics, Women