23 January 2015 – The United Nations human rights office today welcomed the 'ground-breaking decision' of the Salvadorian Legislative Assembly to pardon a young women's 30-year sentence in an abortion case. Carmen Guadalupe Vásquez Aldana, who suffered a miscarriage at the age of 18 after reportedly being raped, was convicted of aggravated homicide...    More

Iceland has been demonstrating to the international community why it ranks number one in the world in closing the gender gap. The Nordic country recently hosted a conference at the United Nations to highlight the influence society has in the way men treat women.    More

23 January 2015 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged world leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to maintain their focus on a broad range of climate, development and gender equality issues, warning that as the global community continues to face multiple crises, the new year must be a time for 'strong...    More

You're invited to the UN ECOSOC 2015 Global Youth Forum on "Youth Engagement in the Transition from MDGs to SDGs: What will it take?" to be held on 2 and 3 February 2015, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the UN Headquarters in New York. UN Women is organizing a special dialogue on Youth and Gender Equality on 3 February 2015, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00...    More

Child abuse is continuing in Iraq where disabled children have been used to carry out terrorist attacks in a belief it will cure them, it emerged on Thursday. In a UN report on Iraq, human rights experts also detailed child prostitution and child pornography, along with other harmful practices targeting girls, such as female genital mutilation, early...    More

A social media campaign by the UN is honouring women human rights defenders worldwide and raising awareness about the dangers of the job. Under the hashtag #reflect2protect, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) is releasing a series of 12 short video profiles of these defenders.    More

The global film industry perpetuates discrimination against women, a UN-backed study on female characters in popular movies has found. Girls and women are over twice as likely as boys and men to be shown in sexually revealing clothes, partially or fully naked.    More

The lack of clean cooking facilities and access to cooking fuel affects the health, safety, livelihoods and environment of a third of the world's population. This is especially the case in the world's most vulnerable settings, where people have no choice but to cook over open fires or cookstoves that generate a lot of indoor smoke. Exposure to these...    More

The German government has donated €24 million (US$30 million) to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Yemen to support nutrition, protective safety nets and girls' education.    More

Excelling at high school is no easy task for teenagers. But for Fatima, an 18-year-old Iraqi refugee student living in Syria, it has been harder than most.    More

From the passing of one of the Arab region's most progressive constitutions enshrining women's rights to changes in legislation to provide long overdue redress to wartime survivors of sexual violence, this timeline is a selection of some of the gender equality achievements, milestones and noteworthy moments from around the world this year.    More

Although there are more than 52 million domestic workers world-wide, including more than 21 million in Asia Pacific, only a small minority are covered by general labour laws. This lack of protection leaves them vulnerable to – sometimes terrible – abuse and exploitation. Journalist Karen Emmons has been working with the photographer Steve McCurry on...    More