The official United Nations theme for International Women's Day 2015 is "Empowering Women - Empowering Humanity: Picture It!" Celebrated globally on 8 March, International Women's Day will highlight the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a historic roadmap signed by 189 governments 20 years ago that sets the agenda for realizing women's rights....    More

Sixteen-year-old Safia was herding goats in Puntland, Somalia, last September when a man approached her and asked for drinking water. She gave him the water, but then he grabbed her and, at knifepoint, dragged her to an isolated area. He held her captive for two weeks, raping her repeatedly.    More

GENEVA – On the occasion of International Women's Day (8 March), the International Labour Organization (ILO) will publish a briefing note providing an assessment of progress made on achieving gender equality in the world of work since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. In addition, the ILO will release a working paper on the "Motherhood...    More

Thanks to a partnership between the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Eataly to support family farmers around the globe, a cooperative of women in Ethiopia are now ready to ship their 4,000 jars of jam to Rome, where they will soon reach the shelves.    More

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