Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

• July 8, 2021

UN Women is looking for a new executive director. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, a former vice president of South Africa, is stepping down after eight years at the helm. The appointment comes as the Generation Equality Forum in Paris just ended, with historically high financial pledges by some governments. But it comes at a moment of peril …

Gender Violence, Secretary-General, UN Agencies, WORLDVIEWS

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Democracy Depends on Women’s Empowerment, Kamala Harris Says in Her UN Debut

Barbara Crossette

• March 16, 2021

Facing a world unsettled and even shocked by what has happened to the United States in recent years and not sure what to expect of Americans now, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke today in clear, reassuring terms to a United Nations audience, tuned in globally. But she warned that democracy everywhere was in peril …

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

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Not All Human Rights Council Specialists Are Perfect: The Latest Controversy

Barbara Crossette

• August 19, 2020

To keep tabs on the lives and rights of people across the world, the United Nations Human Rights Council has the help of 44 independent monitors supposedly chosen for their expertise on a range of themes, from harsh government abuses to often-overlooked individual special needs. A dozen others are assigned specific countries to watch. …

Gender Violence, Human Trafficking, Women

3 Comments

TOPIC: WOMEN

The UN Unveils 6 Themes in a Big Year Pushing for Women’s Rights

Stéphanie Fillion

• January 20, 2020

As the countdown to this year’s main events celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women has begun, UN Women has announced six themes to anchor the two Generation Equality forums to be held in May and in July. While many women’s groups applaud the broad themes, some have serious qualms about one …

Gender Violence, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

UN Women Declares Its Neutrality in the Sex Trade Debate

Barbara Crossette

• November 11, 2019

The surprising controversy over women in the sex trade — tangled in issues of legality, terminology and competing feminist visions — has produced an unequivocal statement from the executive director of UN Women that the agency is not taking sides in this debate. The acrimonious dispute has erupted just as the United Nations is …

Gender Violence, Human Trafficking, Women

5 Comments

TOPIC: WOMEN

UN Women Is Criticized for Appearing to Take Sides on Decriminalizing ‘Sex Work’

Barbara Crossette

• October 17, 2019

A group of civil society organizations is warning that a growing global movement to decriminalize and rebrand prostitution as “sex work” could lead to more, not less, violence against the world’s most vulnerable women and girls. The critics are petitioning UN Women, which is leading a review of the results of the 1995 Fourth …

Human Trafficking, Women

6 Comments

TOPIC: WOMEN

Deconstructing Power: The Global Prevalence of Gender Violence

Ladan Osman

• 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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TOPIC: WOMEN

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

2 Comments

TOPIC: WOMEN

Sexual Harassment at the UN Is Alive and Persistent

Laura E. Kirkpatrick

• December 22, 2017

As its people of the year, Time magazine recently named the Silence Breakers — people who have spoken against sexual harassment and launched the hashtag #MeToo into an international phenomenon with more than seven million hits on social media. Just before the announcement, more than 230 women who work in national security for the …

Gender Violence, Human Rights, Secretary-General, UN Diplomats, Women

4 Comments

TOPIC: WOMEN

#MeToo Must Include All Women: A Chat With UN Women’s Director

Kacie Candela

• November 24, 2017

November 25 marks the annual International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which encompasses 16 days of activism through Dec. 10, with this year’s theme being “leave no one behind.” The annual commemoration couldn’t be better timed this year, coinciding with the #MeToo movement reverberating across the United States — and far …

Gender Violence, Women

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GEOPOLITICS

US Congress Starts Slicing Away at 2018 National Budget, Sure to Hurt UN

Barbara Crossette

• July 24, 2017

The first round in the battle to write a federal budget, working off the Trump administration’s ruthless proposals announced in May, has ended in the House of Representatives appropriations committee. As feared by advocates for women, the poor, refugees, global health programs and even foreign language study, the Republican-led appropriations committee, which sets budget …

Geopolitics, Secretary-General, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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TOPIC: WOMEN

US Immigration Ban Stirs Controversy at the Annual UN Women’s Forum

Laura E. Kirkpatrick

• March 13, 2017

Despite fears that efforts by President Trump to bar visitors to the United States from a number of Muslim majority would limit attendance at this year’s annual United Nations conference on women in New York, UN officials have kept saying there will be record participation. On the first day, however, people were more worried …

Gender Violence, Terrorism, UN Agencies, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Yikes Again! UN Staffers Protest Wonder Woman’s Role at the UN

Dulcie Leimbach

• October 20, 2016

Wonder Woman is not so wonderful in the eyes of hundreds of United Nations staff members around the world. Earlier this week, a petition began circulating among personnel to ask their boss, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to rescind the choice of the cartoon character, whose main uniform is a bustier and high heels, as an …

Gender Violence, Women

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Justin Trudeau, Self-Described Feminist, Wows the UN Crowd

Laura E. Kirkpatrick

• March 17, 2016

“Because it’s 2015,” Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada and self-proclaimed feminist, said simply, using the vernacular of his generation to reinforce his position on gender equality as he spoke at the United Nations recently during an “armchair conversation.” Trudeau, who is 44, was addressing a large audience at an event presented as …

Gender Violence, Women

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Prostitution: A Word That UN Women Does Not Want to Hear

Barbara Crossette

• March 31, 2015

On the eve of a speech Ruchira Gupta was to give on International Women’s Day in New York as the recipient of a Woman of Distinction award, she got a strange email. Gupta, who has collected numerous awards for her work against sex slavery in India — including an Emmy for her 1996 documentary, …