This report asks what needs to change in the approach of the United Nations system as a whole to make significant practical progress on gender equality in disaster risk reduction by 2030. It asks how the United Nations system, and each individual entity, can better support Member States to empower women and promote women’s leadership in disaster and climate risk governance to underpin risk-informed sustainable development that leaves no one behind.

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is central to children and young people’s health and well-being, equipping them with the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy, informed, and responsible choices in their lives, including to prevent HIV and promote gender equality. This global status review of the CSE provides an analysis of countries’ progress towards delivering good quality school-based CSE to all learners and maps some forward-looking recommendations to countries.

The Gender Equality Working Group of the Sustainable Development Goal 3 Global Action Plan on Healthy Living and Well-being for All, chaired by UN Women, along with the Gender and Health Hub at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, developed a guidance note and a checklist of key actions to respond to gender-related barriers to vaccine access for countries to prioritize in COVID-19 national deployment and vaccination plans.  

This decision tree guides data collectors through the various considerations, viable options, and alternative data sources for obtaining information without jeopardizing participants’ safety or the data’s integrity. In doing so, it aims to identify data sources and methodologies that are useful for strengthening services and referral pathways for women experiencing violence during COVID-19.

This study ascertains the levels of existing funding flows to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and the impact of shortfalls on global humanitarian outcomes.

This brief explores the implications for the provision of essential services for women and girls who have experienced violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides recommendations for governments, civil society, and international organizations that are seeking to improve the quality of and access to coordinated health, police and justice, and social services for all women and girls during the crisis and provides examples of promising practices to date.

Across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impacts of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their sex. This policy brief by the UN Secretary-General explores how women and girls’ lives are changing in the face of COVID-19, and outlines suggested priority measures to accompany both the immediate response and longer-term recovery efforts.

In this report, the UN Secretary-General assesses the status of women in the United Nations system for the period from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2017. Since the previous report, the representation of women in the Professional and higher categories in the United Nations system has increased from 42.8 per cent to 44.2 per cent. The largest increases were registered at the highest levels (Under-Secretary-General and Assistant Secretary-General), which is a direct result of the efforts of the Secretary-General in line with his commitment to reach parity at the highest levels by 2021.

The “Enabling environment guidelines for the United Nations system” will support efforts to create a working environment that embraces equality, eradicates bias, and is inclusive of all staff. These guidelines include good practices and recommendations on workplace flexibility, family-friendly policies, and standards of conduct, as well as on recruitment and talent management.

UNFPA, UNICEF, and UN Women have developed a fact sheet to highlight the discrimination that indigenous women and adolescent girls face in their efforts to access reproductive health care in many parts of the world. The experiences of indigenous women often lead to health risks and mortality rates that can be more than three times higher than those experienced by non-indigenous women.

UNESCO, in collaboration with UN Women, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF and WHO, published an updated guidance which promotes health and well-being, respect for human rights and gender equality and the empowerment of children and young people to lead healthy, safe and productive lives.

This policy note explores policy and programming interlinkages between different forms of violence and considers entry points in the areas of (i) national legislation, (ii) prevention strategies, (iii) response for survivors, and (iv) data and evidence, for increased coordination and collaboration to advance the objectives of ending both female genital mutilation/cutting and other forms of violence against women and girls, in particular intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence.

The Essential services package forms part of the United Nations Joint Global Programme on Essential Services for Women and Girls Subject to Violence. This programme is a partnership by UN Women, UNFPA, WHO, UNDP and UNODC which aims to provide greater access to a coordinated set of essential and quality multi-sectoral services for all women and girls who have experienced gender-based violence. This programme is supported by the Governments of Australia and Spain.

Prevention cannot be a short-term effort, but rather an endeavour that requires ongoing commitment from governments and other stakeholders, increased research to inform and monitor progress, and persistent action that addresses violence against women at its source. The joint UN framework draws together contemporary knowledge and practice in violence prevention. Its focus is on addressing the root causes as well as risk and protective factors associated with violence against women.

In 2012–2013, UN Women, UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA and the MDG-Fund, in partnership with the Governments of Norway and Spain, undertook a corporate joint evaluation of joint programmes on gender equality in the United Nations system to address a gap in evidence on country-level joint gender programmes (JGPs).