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
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
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.
The author, an Australian who has been researching the lives of women and girls worldwide, risked traveling in Afghanistan by herself, yet she said she would return, despite the problems she met. Here, a woman heading into the village of Ishkashim, near the Tajikistan border. JOHANNA HIGGS
Protests against a new overtime law in Hungary, Dec. 12, 2018, Budapest. Women who defend human rights are subjected more than ever before to a range of threats, from online trolling to torture, a new Swedish report finds.
Secretary-General António Guterres holding a global town hall meeting with United Nations staff members, Jan. 17, 2019. The authors cite instances of tough resistance to Guterres’s systemwide gender parity strategy, including from certain staff unions. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
In 2018, 55 percent of the world’s population lived in urban settings, and a UN report projects that by 2030, Delhi will overtake Tokyo as the largest city. In the New York-Newark metro area, above, the population of 18.8 million in 2018 is projected to hit 19.9 million by 2030. Paradoxically, areas of intense population growth may present more opportunities for women but not necessarily for their security. JOHN PENNEY
