An increase in attacks on media outlets in Haiti by armed gangs which control most of the capital Port-au-Prince is intended to intimidate journalists and instill chaos according to the UN agency for culture, UNESCO.
For Waad Al-Kateab, the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December 2024 felt almost unreal. “I thought the ending of my story was dying in exile,” she told UN News. “And it just happened out of the blue.”
Online attacks against women are getting worse, according to the UN, causing lasting damage that can spill over into real world violence. Leading activists from Spain and Latin America met at UN Headquarters on Wednesday to rally women and share strategies on fighting back.
Women rights advocates gathered at UN Headquarters for the world’s biggest meeting on gender equality have been sharing their concerns about the growing backlash against feminism, and how major funding cuts from donor countries could threaten programmes aimed at improving the lives of women and girls.
Ever since former US First Lady and human rights champion Eleanor Roosevelt inspired the first UN sub-commission on the status of women in the 1940s, thousands of women around the world meet at UN Headquarters in New York every March to take the pulse of the planet and make their voices heard.
A decline in democracy and harmful content spread on social media platforms are helping to drive a backlash against feminism, and the growth of misogynistic and retrograde ideas about the roles of men and women and society.
Some 640,000 women and girls in Ukraine will be affected by cuts to psychosocial support, gender-based violence services, safe spaces, and economic empowerment programs following the confirmation from US authorities to end practically all financial contributions to the UN reproductive and sexual health agency (UNFPA).
Communities on the frontline of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are being killed, injured and displaced on a daily basis, as the war grinds on.
At night he sleeps under a tarpaulin sheet on the ruins of his family home. Like others returning to northern Gaza after months of being displaced by war, Sufian Al-Majdalawi clings to whatever he can find.
Bahrain, with its shallow waters and rich oyster beds, has long been synonymous with pearls, which formed the backbone of the island nation’s economy for thousands of years. Diving for pearls, otherwise known as pearling, remains part of the country’s cultural DNA.
