Media Coverage

Haitian women and girls are facing an “alarming” level of violence, including threats of rape, in makeshift displacement camps that have sprung up as a result of a surge of gang violence in the Caribbean nation, the United Nations says. In a report released on July 17, UN Women said the camps lack...

Gambia's parliament on July 15 rejected a bill that would have ended a ban on female genital mutilation (FGM), after lawmakers voted down all the clauses in the proposed law. "The ban on FGM is still firmly maintained in the Gambia," the Ministry of Information said in a statement after the vote....

International envoys raised concerns about restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan during meetings with the country's ruling Taliban in Qatar, United Nations' political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo said on July 1. The two-day, UN-led meeting was the first of its kind attended by the Taliban...

The United Nations' top official in Afghanistan defended the failure to include Afghan women in the upcoming first meeting between the Taliban and envoys from 22 countries, insisting that demands for women’s rights are certain to be raised. U.N. special envoy Roza Otunbayeva was pummeled with...

A court in Peru has sentenced 10 retired soldiers for raping nine teenage girls and women during the country's armed conflict decades ago. The court said the systematic rapes constituted a crime against humanity. The soldiers were sentenced to between six and 12 years in jail. While rights groups...

The Israeli military’s “deliberate” use of heavy weapons in the Gaza Strip has been an “intentional and direct attack on the civilian population,” a new report by a United Nations-backed independent commission has found. Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry...

Haiti’s transitional council appointed a new cabinet on June 11, marking the final step in rebuilding the government that will lead a country under siege by gangs. Haiti struggles with gangs that control at least 80 percent of the capital of Port-au-Prince. It is preparing for the UN-backed...

A new trial against the jailed Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi opened on June 8 in her absence, said a lawyer for the women’s rights activist who has refused to attend hearings. Mohammadi, 52, has been jailed since November 2021 over several past convictions relating to her...

Five years after a national inquiry in Canada delivered more than 200 recommendations aimed at protecting Indigenous women and girls from going missing or being murdered, former commissioners say there’s been too little systemic change across the country. The final report of the National Inquiry...

The United Nations human rights chief has said that the apparent deliberate denial of safe access for humanitarian agencies within war-torn Sudan could amount to a war crime. “Sudan has become a living nightmare. Almost half of the population—25 million people—are in urgent need of food and medical...