Olesia Bondar, Director of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund (UWF) spoke to the UN Trust Fund on how the current crisis is affecting Ukrainian women and girls, and the key role of civil society and women’s rights organizations play in the context of humanitarian and intersecting crises.

In an op-ed for the Global Governance Project, UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous writes: "The international community, including G20 leaders, have an opportunity to work together in unity to prevent the reversal of the hard-won rights of Afghan women and girls and to work constructively to enable a more inclusive trajectory that will actively foster peace and resilience in Afghanistan – and the region."

UN Women will host the first all-Black, all-women global selling exhibition and auction titled “A Force for Change”, with proceeds benefiting Black women across the world and the participating artists. The exhibition will be open to the public in New York City from 27 to 31 July 2021, with an online auction hosted on Artsy from 16 to 30 July 2021, closing at 2pm EDT.

Mete Belovacıklı, 59, is Editor in Chief of one of the oldest newspapers in Turkey, Milliyet. As a strong defender of gender equality, he has led Milliyet in becoming a partner of UN Women’s Global Media Compact. Milliyet is the only media organisation that became a commitment maker at the Generation Equality Forum with five-year commitments on economic justice and rights.

Ahead of the Generation Equality Forum in Paris, UN Women checked in with leading activists from around the world on what we can expect from the Generation Equality Forum, why they’re participating and what happens next.

Taking place in Paris, from 30 June – 2 July, the Generation Equality Forum will bring together governments, activists, private sector partners and youth, and leaders from every sector. Together, they will commit investments, programmes and policies that fast-track progress towards an equal future for all. As we start our action journey, learn more about some of our feminist action heroes who make up Generation Equality. Which Generation Equality action hero do you support and aspire to be?

Nahla Haidar is a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). She has over 30 years of professional experience mainly within the United Nations System, ranging from social development, to relief coordination, to peace-building and human rights. Ms. Haidar is CEDAW’s rapporteur on reprisals and covers cases on women human rights defenders.

Yana Panfilova, 22, is a Ukrainian HIV positive activist and co-founder as well as chairwoman of Teenergizer, an organization that supports and advocates for the rights of HIV positive youth in Europe and Central Asia (Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia). She was also nominated as a heroine for UN Women’s Generation Equality campaign in Ukraine.  

From young gender equality advocates to high-ranking government officials, key stakeholders from North America, Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia called for the urgent realization of women’s and girl’s human rights and for turning the commitments to gender equality into reality.

On this International Widows' Day, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka calls to recognize widows in all their diversity, and acknowledge the need to integrate them fully and visibly into work on gender equality so that we break cycles of poverty and disadvantage and ensure that all widows can enjoy their full human rights.

UN Women expresses its strong concern that the recent ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on female athletes with naturally elevated levels of testosterone contravenes the international human rights norms and standards expressed in the United Nations Human Rights Council’s resolution of March 2019 on the ‘Elimination of Discrimination against Women and Girls in Sport’.

As we close out the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence on Human Rights Day (10 December), we stand in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of women human rights defenders who are leading the fight for universal human rights and lives free from violence.

In a statement for International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says: "We honour today the women whose courageous efforts—and sometimes whose lives—are given in defense of the universal human rights agenda and women’s empowerment".

A guide to the global gender equality agenda at the 73rd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 73), who will be there and what’s at stake

Areej Jamal Al- Khawlani has worked with UN Women as a Programme Associate in Yemen since 2017. Prior to joining UN Women, she was part of the Yemen Parliamentarians Against Corruption and worked for the Mwatana Organization for Human Rights. As the conflict in Yemen nears its fourth year, the conditions are worsening for women and girls: 76 per cent of internally displaced persons (IDPs) are women and children, and an estimated 3 million women and girls are at risk of gender-based violence, according to UNFPA. In this interview, Ms. Al-Khawlani shares the current needs and priorities of Yemeni women and girls.

Kadire Tahiraj is the founder and director of Centre for Promotion of Women’s Rights in Drenas, central Kosovo, which has been advocating for the rights of survivors of sexual violence during the war in 1998-1999. The centre provides support and services to survivors who still face many challenges in the face of post-conflict transformation.

The Supreme Court of India gave a landmark judgment on 22 August, declaring the practice of unilateral and instantaneous triple talaq under the Muslim personal law unconstitutional by a 3:2 majority. The triple talaq is a practice under which a Muslim man can instantly divorce his wife by uttering the word “talaq” three times.

In a statement on the continued detention of women human rights activists in Turkey, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka calls for immediate release of the arrested women’s rights and human rights activists and support to those, like women’s human rights defenders, who work for the good of their societies.

Donna Gabaccia, a Professor of History at the University of Toronto and former Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota and award-winning author on gender and migration, speaks to UN Women about the challenges and opportunities to protect women’s rights and support families in the context of migration.