What was once hailed as a vehicle for empowerment has, for millions of women and girls, become a source of fear. Fuelled by artificial intelligence, anonymity, and weak accountability, online abuse is rapidly escalating. Yet, 1.8 billion women and girls still lack legal protection from online harassment and other forms of technology-facilitated abuse. The alarm […]
When Salma* was just 15, she was forced to get married, even though she wanted to stay in school and become a doctor someday. Instead, she found herself tied to a man who “changed from being kind to being a monster.” He would beat her “with his bare hands,” she said recently. The young mother from Yemen […]
In Somalia, where six out of ten births take place without a doctor, childbirth is often a matter of survival. For women like 38-year-old Farhiya from rural Beletweyne, the consequences can be devastating — a painful obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal that left her incontinent, isolated, and cut off from her […]
In war-torn Sudan, rape is likely being used as a weapon of war and simply being a woman there is “a strong predictor” of hunger, violence and death, the UN’s gender equality agency warned on Tuesday November 10, 2025. “Women speaking to us from El Fasher, the heart of Sudan’s latest catastrophe, tell us that they’ve […]
COP30 opened in Belém on Monday with a clear message: the era of half-measures is over. Climate change is here, devastating communities and driving up costs, but solutions are within reach. Clean energy is surging, resilience saves lives, and cooperation can still bend the curve further. “This is the moment to match opportunity with urgency,” […]
Thousands of diplomats and climate experts are heading to Belém, in Brazil’s Amazon, for COP30 – the latest round of UN climate talks. Their task couldn’t be clearer: turn promises into action and agree on tougher plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. After decades of pledges and annual summits from Kyoto to Sharm el-Sheikh, the planet keeps getting hotter and […]
Since 1990, the number of people using modern contraception methods has doubled globally but despite this, nearly 224 million women in mainly developing regions still do not use safe and effective family planning methods, according to the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA. The increased use reflects a major health success that has allowed millions […]
As global challenges deepen, governments, civil society and international partners convened in Doha on Monday November 3, 2025 to highlight concrete solutions to advance social development and confront some of today’s most urgent crises – from widening hunger and poverty to growing inequality and climate-driven instability. The discussions took place at the Doha Solutions Forum for […]
Against a quiet morning sky, the flags of the United Nations and the State of Qatar rose together in Doha on Sunday, ahead of the Second World Summit for Social Development. The ceremony marked the United Nations’ official assumption of the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) as the venue where world leaders will work to […]
Twenty-five years ago, the international community agreed a new approach to women’s inclusion in peace processes in what came to be known as the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS), outlined in the landmark Security Council resolution 1325. The resolution “was a real game-changer,” says Laura Flores, Americas Division Director at the Department of Political and […]
