Violence against Women
This fundamental violation of women’s rights remains widespread. Women need strong laws, backed by implementation and services for protection and prevention.
Peace & Security
Women bear the brunt of modern conflicts. Specific threats to them must be stopped, and women must be at the centre of peace talks and post-conflict reconstruction.
Leadership & Participation
The percentage of women in political and other leadership roles is too small. Quotas and new skills can expand space for women to realize their leadership potential.
National Planning & Budgeting
Gender equality should be a stated objective of plans to provide public services, backed by specific implementation actions and sufficient funding.
Economic Empowerment
Women lag far behind men in access to land, credit and decent jobs. The multiple barriers that prevent women from seizing economic opportunities must be abolished.
Millennium Development Goals
The MDGs provide a basic roadmap for development. Gender equality is the third goal, but it is also integral to achieving all eight MDGs.
Focus Areas
UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide.
What's new
In a joint press statement, UNAMA and UN Women representatives in Afghanistan call on the Afghan Government and Parliament to enforce a landmark law enacted by presidential decree in 2009. It has yet to gain parliamentary approval and challenges persist in its enforcement.
As the UN marks World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, UN Women speaks to the Vice-President of the Women's International Network of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, Asia Pacific Chapter, on her work and on introducing radio technologies to community radio producers.
As the UN marks World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, a glimpse into a telecommunications company assisting acid attack survivors in Bangladesh and another incorporating mass communications to combat violence against women in Turkey -- just two of the more than 500 companies applying the Women’s Empowerment Principles.
Amid violence-fraught local and regional elections, in which 14 candidates were killed, 300 women contenders were trained by UN Women and the Iraq Foundation. Many emerged successful and thanks to a quota law, women will probably hold 26 per cent of seats on local councils across Iraq.
In a statement, Acting Head of UN Women and Assistant Secretary-General Lakshmi Puri welcomes mounting global momentum to end gender-related killings and urges States to take bold and swift action to implement international agreements.
As the Donor Conference on Mali starts in Brussels, a lawyer and President of the Malian branch of the NGO Working Group on Women Peace and Security, speaks in her own words about the atrocities occurring in her country and her work to assist survivors of violence, provide access to justice, and ensure women have a say in peace negotiations.
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