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Women

Hungary Forbids Gender Studies, Enraging Academics

Barbara Crossette

• August 14, 2018

In the doldrums of a European summer, when many universities are mostly closed or short-staffed, the populist Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban sent a directive to higher-education institutions on Aug. 9 forbidding the teaching of gender studies. Hungarian academicians, faculties outside the country as well as civil society organizations reacted quickly, calling …

Gender Violence, Human Rights, Women

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Michelle Bachelet of Chile Nominated to Be Next UN Rights Commissioner

Barbara Crossette

• August 8, 2018

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has nominated Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile, to become the next UN high commissioner for human rights. The nomination has been sent to the General Assembly for approval. Bachelet, who is 66, was Guterres’s top choice all along in the selection process, which began informally in the …

Human Rights, Secretary-General, Women

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Women’s Roles as UN Peacekeepers: A Status Report

• August 7, 2018

Women have historically been underrepresented across the United Nations system, but notably in peacekeeping, one of the most highly visible activities of the world body. And while the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations publishes monthly data on troop- and police-contributing countries, by missions and by gender, the numbers are not easily comprehensible. There are …

Peace and Security, UN Peacekeeping, Women

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Backing Up Women With Facts and Figures

Sarah Friedmann

• July 16, 2018

In 2001, a pair of academics at Brigham Young University in Utah aimed to identify data linking the status of women to the security and behavior of countries. Seventeen years later, what began as a single article has evolved into a vital, comprehensive global database, offering insights into women’s lives in 176 countries. Meet the …

Gender Violence, Women

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Six Women, Including This Ghanaian, Join the UN’s Disability Committee

Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame

• June 15, 2018

When I was growing up in Ghana, if someone had told me that one day I would hear my name announced as a member of a United Nations treaty body, I would hardly have believed it. But this is where I find myself, after many years of personal and professional experience fighting for disability …

Disabilities, Women

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Nigerian Women in African Migration, Vulnerable and Abused

• June 11, 2018

Barbie Latza Nadeau is an American journalist based in Rome, covering the large refugee migrations from the Middle East and Africa since 2011, often with an emphasis on women. She has recently written a book, “Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast,” zeroing in on a huge increase in the …

Africa, Gender Violence, Human Trafficking, Migration, Women

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‘Don’t Try to Be a Superwoman’: An Interview With Michelle Bachelet

Dulcie Leimbach

• May 31, 2018

Michelle Bachelet ended her second term as president of Chile on March 11, 2018. Her first term, from 2006 to 2010, was marked by an ambitious social and economic agenda advancing women’s rights and better health care. Her cabinet of ministers, for example, was composed of an equal number of men and women, as …

Gender Violence, Human Rights, Latin America, SDGs, Women

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Deconstructing Power: The Global Prevalence of Gender Violence

• May 19, 2018

In scriptures, poetry, constitutions and leaders’ pledges to protect all members of the state, women are often listed with children or others rendered “vulnerable” by circumstance. The woman citizen is imagined as less adult. Is it possible that vocabularies that consider women as objects make a quiet argument that the assault on our person …

Africa, Gender Violence, Women

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Why Do You Treat Us Like This?, Iranian Women Challenge Their Government

• April 20, 2018

ZAHEDAN, Iran — “They give all of the rights to men,” said Neda, a young woman living in Zahedan, a border city near Afghanistan and Pakistan, who did not want to reveal her last name. “You can never make your own decisions. Many women need permission from a man in their family to leave …

Gender Violence, Middle East, Women

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A Taste of Running for Political Office Has Left This UN Retiree Ready for More

• April 10, 2018

ORANGE, Conn. — Margaret Novicki is a 22-year veteran of the United Nations, having served in various regions in Africa and as the director of strategic communications at UN headquarters in New York. Upon her retirement in 2017 at age 62 from an eventful, complicated career at the UN, Novicki, an American, ran as …

Africa, UN Careers, Women

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US Congress Strikes Back at Trump’s Goals to Curtail Family Planning

Barbara Crossette

• March 25, 2018

In a rare act of legislative sabotage, the Trump administration’s plan to starve international family planning of funds has been killed for now as committees in both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate slipped hundreds of millions of dollars to support reproductive health programs into a 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion US budget …

Gender Violence, LGBT, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, Women

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In Colombia, Female Ex-Combatants Still Face Risk of Stigmatization

Adriana Erthal Abdenur

• March 13, 2018

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and the resulting agenda on women, peace and security has called for more inclusive peace processes, stressing that women’s specific needs and experiences should be taken into account during and after peace negotiations. Yet the role of female ex-combatants in peace processes remains understudied and somewhat neglected in …

Disarmament, Gender Violence, Women

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Women Descend on the UN, Riding on the Heels of #TimesUp

Dulcie Leimbach

• March 12, 2018

As women across the world battle systemic harassment and worse abuses for merely being female, the United Nations has opened its annual gathering of women in one of its biggest conferences of the year. This time, the 12-day meeting focuses on the status of rural women, but since it follows closely on the heels …

Gender Violence, Human Rights, Secretary-General, Women

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Thank You, UN, for Protecting the Rights of Women

Bertrand Ramcharan

• February 28, 2018

There is still a long way to go to uphold the rights of women worldwide, and UN Women, a department of the Secretariat, is now carrying the torch in this struggle. It builds on the efforts of the UN human-rights program going back to the earliest days of the organization. For International Women’s Day, …

Human Rights, International Justice, Women

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The ‘Incredible Courage’ of Asma Jahangir, Pakistan’s Human-Rights Advocate

Barbara Crossette

• February 17, 2018

Only a few days before Pakistan’s most famous human-rights advocate, Asma Jahangir, was felled by a heart attack on Feb. 11, she was speaking out in support of a group of ethnic Pashtuns who had marched across the country from their homes along the Afghanistan border to protest military brutality. A Pashtun boy had …

Asia, Human Rights, Women

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