UN Women

• March 19, 2019

Ana Menéndez is a former Spanish diplomat who oversees the gender parity strategy at the United Nations, working directly for Secretary-General António Guterres for a year and a half now on one of his main priorities at the institution. Menéndez is tasked with the role — besides being responsible for overall UN policy — after …

Secretary-General, US-UN Relations, Women

Leave a Comment

Big Holes in the UN Development Goals Are Exposed by New Studies

Barbara Crossette

• March 18, 2019

Serious flaws in the system for tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals have been uncovered in a newly published collection of stunning, provocative research by eminent developing policy specialists. They are finding that the lofty visions that produced the SDGs, now in their fourth year of implementation, have from the start been undercut …

Health and Population, SDGs

3 Comments

TOPIC: WOMEN

At the UN’s Global Summit on Women’s Rights, the US Looks Chaotic

Laura E. Kirkpatrick

• March 7, 2019

More than 10,000 people will soon converge on the United Nations for its annual Commission on the Status of Women conference, providing a unique forum to gauge progress and to press for the rights of women and marginalized populations around the world. Founded at a forward-thinking moment in 1946, the commission’s yearly meetings offer …

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

Leave a Comment

TOPIC: WOMEN

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

Leave a Comment

TOPIC: WOMEN

‘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

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

Leave a Comment

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

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

Leave a Comment

TOPIC: WOMEN

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

Stéphanie Fillion

• February 12, 2018

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 …

Caribbean, Governance, Latin America, Women

Leave a Comment

TOPIC: WOMEN

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

Chris Gelardi

• January 19, 2018

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. …

Health and Population, Women

Leave a Comment

Financing the UN: Payers, Pipers and Tunes

Stephen Browne and Thomas G. Weiss

• December 7, 2017

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 …

UN Agencies

One Comment

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

One Comment

TOPIC: WOMEN

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

Ingvild Bode

• August 28, 2017

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 …

Secretary-General, Women

Leave a Comment

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

Leave a Comment

WORLDVIEWS

Three Ways to Help Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls

Stephanie Asher

• May 3, 2017

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 …