Koki Muli Grignon, a Kenyan diplomat, center, who managed the negotiations on the final document summarizing the annual UN meeting on women’s rights, told delegates that she had been sent nearly 1,000 text messages attacking her because of her work leading the debate. LAURA E. KIRKPATRICK
A first-time voter with her ID card at a polling booth during national elections in 2014, in Sikkim. This year’s national election in India spans 39 days across April and May. A new book reveals that 21 million women are not registered to vote, reflecting social resistance to women doing so.
Every national election in India is numerically mind-boggling, and this year is no exception. More than 800 million registered voters are expected to participate in an election spanning 39 days from April 11 to May 19.
Ana Menéndez, a former Spanish diplomat, leads the UN’s internal gender parity strategy and oversees the institution’s policymaking. In an interview with PassBlue, she said that the UN stands for certain “values,” and an integral part of those beliefs is gender equality. Here, she attends a UN Commission on the Status of Women meeting, March 2019. AMANDA VOISARD/UN WOMEN
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are meant to improve the lives of everyone universally, but the system tracking their progress is showing flaws resulting from politics and a heavy reliance on numbers. Women offering food at Cuba’s Independence Day celebration, Caimito, 2015. JOE PENNEY
Serious flaws in the system for tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals have been uncovered in a newly published collection of stunning, provocative research by eminent developing policy specialists.
In August, 2017, more than half a million Rohingya refugees flooded across the border from Burma to Bangladesh to escape violence in Rakhine State, including pregnant women and children. The United States gave about $28 million in food and other goods, but the government’s global gag rule banned family planning aid, violating women’s rights, say the authors. ASHIQUE RUSHDI/USAID
At the 2018 meeting of the annual UN megaconference on women, a scene of which is captured above, the United States delegation created controversy over its conservative stances on women’s rights. This year, days before the meeting starts, the US has offered scant information on how it will participate, revealing major disorganization in the government. RYAN BROWN/UN WOMEN
François Delattre, left, the French ambassador to the UN and president of the Security Council for March, with Christoph Heusgen, Germany’s UN ambassador and president of the Council in April. They presented the agenda of the Council’s first twin presidencies to the media on March 1, 2019.
Venezuelans in Florida “strike for democracy,” as they called their demonstration for their home country, Feb. 2, 2019, above. A new initiative by a group of female Nobel laureates offers a database of female experts for journalists to interview for reporting on international conflicts. CREATIVE COMMONS
In Dakar, staff members from UN Women Senegal and other UN agencies attend a presentation on sexual harassment in the workplace, part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 2016.
As multilateralism takes a beating from President Trump amid the “new world disorder,” as one European diplomat put it, three women who know the United Nations inside and out through previous top leadership jobs have originated a Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion.
Brexit protesters, near Parliament, London, January 2019. Women will likely take the biggest hit from Britain’s exit from the European Union, say rights specialists in the country and a UN rights advocate.
NOTTINGHAM, England — It has been more than two and a half years since Britain voted to leave the European Union. As the rest of the world knows, nothing since then has gone smoothly. It’s not even clear where most voters stand on the issue today. But despite the nonstop debate, women’s voices continue to be almost entirely sidelined.
