• UN Women

    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Michelle Bachelet of Chile Nominated to Be Next UN Rights Commissioner

    by  • August 8, 2018 • Human Rights, Secretary-General, Women • 

    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...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

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

    by  • May 31, 2018 • Gender-Based Violence, Human Rights, Latin America, Women • 5 Comments

    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...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Deconstructing Power: The Global Prevalence of Gender Violence

    by  • May 19, 2018 • Africa, Gender-Based Violence, Women • 

    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...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

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

    by  • March 12, 2018 • Gender-Based Violence, Human Rights, Secretary-General, Women • 2 Comments

    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...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    As Sweden and Canada Push a ‘Feminist Foreign Policy,’ Others Resist the Label

    by  • February 12, 2018 • Caribbean, Governance, Latin America, Women • 

    After years of civil war, Somalia is beginning to build democratic institutions with support from the West, even as horrific violence repeatedly strikes the capital, Mogadishu. Help from foreign countries and regional groups — such as the European Union, Italy and the United States — was provided in Somalia’s 2016 election, where electoral processes...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Michelle Bachelet, Outgoing President of Chile, Gets a WHO Post

    by  • January 19, 2018 • Health and Population, Women • 

    Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has agreed to chair the board of the World Health Organization’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health after she finishes her government role on March 11. The announcement came after a Jan. 10 meeting at the presidential palace in Santiago, during which the WHO leadership offered Bachelet the position....

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    Financing the UN: Payers, Pipers and Tunes

    by  • December 7, 2017 • UN Agencies, World Bank • 1 Comment

    GENEVA — Change is in the air again on First Avenue. Among numerous reform options being bandied about, none will be more consequential than those on financing the United Nations system. There are the sledgehammer arguments: drastic slashes in funding by Washington and other donors could precipitate dramatic change. As we have argued in...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

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

    by  • November 24, 2017 • Gender-Based Violence, Women • 1 Comment

    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...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Where Are the Female Leaders at the UN? Gender Bias Persists

    by  • August 28, 2017 • Secretary-General, Women • 

    The exhibition “HERStory: A Celebration of Leading Women in the United Nations” was held at the Unesco headquarters in Paris this summer, after it made its debut in New York last year. Designed to showcase the contributions of female leaders throughout the UN’s history, it featured such high-profile personalities as Margaret Anstee, the first...

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    GEOPOLITICS

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

    by  • July 24, 2017 • Geopolitics, Secretary-General, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations • 

    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...

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    WORLDVIEWS

    Three Ways to Help Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls

    by  • May 3, 2017 • Gender-Based Violence, Health and Population, Human Rights, WORLDVIEWS • 1 Comment

    Celebrating International Women's Day in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 2015

    Everyone has a fundamental right to live free of violence. Yet violence against women and girls is a health epidemic and a leading cause of injury and disability for women across the globe. In many regions, it kills as many women and girls from ages 15 to 44 as cancer and surpasses injury from...

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    TAKE A LOOK

    Broken Progress for Women in Politics; More Trafficking of Men; Diverse New York

    by  • March 28, 2017 • Africa, Asia, Gender-Based Violence, Human Trafficking, Take a Look • 

    New numbers from the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women show that progress of women in politics has stalled in parliaments and at executive levels of government or advanced marginally. The data form the basis of an elaborate Women in Politics 2017 map launched during the recent session at UN headquarters of the Commission on...

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    WORLDVIEWS

    Advice to António Guterres: A Leaner UN Could Be a Better UN

    by  • March 27, 2017 • Secretary-General, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS • 

    GENEVA — Whether or not he is a fan of Chinese characters, António Guterres will have to discover the double meaning of a crisis as opportunity. United Nations corridors on First Avenue in New York are buzzing with anxiety about the possibility of impending cuts in funding from the United States, with hints from...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Women’s Rights Must Be Backed by Legal Rights, a New Coalition Insists

    by  • February 28, 2017 • Development, Gender-Based Violence, Women, World Bank • 

    More than two decades have passed since a series of dynamic international conferences in the 1990s — on human rights, reproductive choices and broad empowerment for women — inspired and encouraged women around the world to raise their hopes in many ways. Subsequently, there have been gains in female education at all levels, a...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Citing Trump Immigration Ban, a Major Group Drops Out of UN’s Annual Women’s Conference

    by  • February 11, 2017 • UN Agencies, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, Women • 

    The annual meeting of the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women, held in New York every March, may be in trouble because of uncertainty and fear about the Trump administration’s attempt to ban immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. One major group has announced it is pulling out, and calls are being heard...

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    A New Campaign, #EveryHourMatters, Urges Instant Post-Rape Care

    by  • March 28, 2016 • Gender-Based Violence, Health and Population, UN Agencies, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Women • 3 Comments

    Maureen Phiri, a young girl from a poor family in Malawi, was only 11 years old when she was raped by the man who had hired her to do housework for him and his wife. Not only did Maureen continue to experience sexual abuse from the man she worked for, he left her with another...

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    As Syrian Peace Talks Take Shape, How Will Women Take Part?

    by  • December 26, 2015 • Gender-Based Violence, Middle East, Peace and Security, Security Council, Syria, Women • 2 Comments

    When the United Nations Security Council recently approved timelines to begin peace talks and institute a national cease-fire in Syria, the language in the resolution gave no hint of the magnitude of such undertakings, nor did the congratulatory speeches afterward by diplomats delve into the details. That means the nitty-gritty work is left to...

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