women's rights

UN headquarters in New York, during the opening of the General Assembly’s annual debate, above, September 2019. The Generation Equality Forum scheduled for May in Mexico City, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing conference on women’s rights, is likely to be postponed or cancelled. AMANDA VOISARD/UN PHOTO
Another highlight of the year marking the 25th anniversary of a breakthrough international conference in Beijing on women’s rights has fallen victim to the global march of the new coronavirus, Covid-19.

The authors, Samea Shanori, left, and Fiona Shukri, at a pomegranate festival in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. They argue that participation of women in the US-Taliban peace deal will only hurt them without their “methodical, sustained and substantive engagement.”

Grammy Award-winning singer and a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, Angélique Kidjo performing at an event for International Women’s Day, March 2020. This year was supposed to be a time for heralding women’s rights, but so far that is not working out. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
This year was intended to be a celebratory time for women: the 25th anniversary of the momentous Beijing conference on women’s rights and how to advance them. It isn’t working out that way, however, as a global health crisis and disagreements among advocates for women rewrite the script.

This week, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia’s 34-year-old de facto ruler, was on a tear. He arrested members of his own royal family and initiated an oil price war with Russia that has sent the price of oil—and the world’s stock markets—plummeting.

Striking on International Women’s Day, 2019 in London. One way to gauge whether a society that has been at war will ever be peaceful is to see how it treats women and girls at home.    
Nearly 700 people, many of them young adults and students, flocked to the United Nations recently to attend an all-day gathering on “War No More.” Who were they eager to see and hear? The global feminist icon Gloria Steinem and Leymah Gbowee, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who led her fellow countrywomen to help end Liberia’s civil war in 2003.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres received an honorary degree from the New School university in New York City on Feb. 17. He spoke at length on “women and power,” blaming patriarchy for the injustices inflicted on women and girls. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO

UN Secretary-General António Guterres received an honorary degree from the New School university in New York City on Feb. 17. He spoke at length on “women and power,” blaming patriarchy for the injustices inflicted on women and girls. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO 
With International Women’s Day, March 8, on the horizon, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres blasted the intractable power of patriarchy, the cause of overwhelming gender injustice and an abuse of historical proportions, in his view.

A participant at the 2019 annual women’s rights meeting at the UN in New York. This year’s preparations for the gathering, held in early March, have already forced diplomats working on a political declaration to take sides in promoting or excluding certain rights. AMANDA VOISARD/UN WOMEN

A health worker in Togo, supported by the US, discussing family planning choices with local women. Trump’s new budget proposal would continue to restrict money for reproductive health sharply, “to suit the antichoice crowd” in the US electorate, the writer says. USAID
Whether or not Donald Trump will be re-elected president on Nov. 3, a tough debate is likely to begin soon in the United States Congress over the national budget for the unpredictable year ahead. Reproductive health issues rank high on the agenda for women’s rights advocates.

Clarice Gargard, a Dutch columnist for a large newspaper in the Netherlands, has described receiving online threats and attacks in comments related to her work. The remarks, she says, are mostly related to her “giving a different perspective on society.” 
When Reporters Without Borders recently tallied the murders of journalists across the globe in 2019, the organization found that the confirmed death toll, 49, was the lowest since 2003. That was the good news.