Advocacy & Lobbying
Ahead of the 2027 general election, a coalition of faith-based and civil society organisations has called for urgent reforms to enhance women’s political participation and leadership inclusion in Nigeria.
The coalition made the call in Abuja while addressing journalists on the persistent underrepresentation of women in governance.
Mother Leone-Martha Okaraga of the African Faith and Justice Network expressed concern that women remain significantly excluded from political leadership, despite constituting about half of Nigeria’s population.
She called for reforms of political party structures and stronger enforcement of laws that penalise electoral violence against women.
According to her, the current political environment remains unconducive for women’s active participation in politics.
“There are no guardrails”, says Karen Davila about popular social media platforms. “AI, like anything, can be used for good – but it can also be abused.”
Davila, an award-winning broadcast journalist and UN Women National Goodwill Ambassador for the Philippines, describes her experience coming face-to-anonymous-faces with online abusers in sophisticated – and disturbing – digital abuse campaigns.
Immediately following her moderation of a 2016 presidential debate in the Philippines, in a deliberate campaign to bully the press, tens of thousands of vulgar and threatening comments appeared in Davila’s social media feeds – every hour. Although it was clear the commenters were bots, the misogynistic attacks were designed by humans to damage her credibility and her sense of safety.
The campaign of online violence was a message to the country and to journalists. “They want to push you to silence so that you don’t criticize the actions of the administration”, says Davila.
In Sudan, the crisis is staggering. After three years of conflict, humanitarian systems have collapsed. Sudan now has the highest number of internally displaced people in the world, and nearly half of Sudan’s population, 19 million people, face acute hunger. Women, girls, and historically marginalized groups are bearing the brunt of the crisis and make up the majority of those needing lifesaving assistance. Conflict and displacement deepen existing inequalities and often increase loss of income and education, and exposure to gender-based violence while limiting their access to medical assistance, caregiving support, and safe shelter.
Our partners in Sudan are providing food, shelter, and safety for women and girls daily in areas few other organizations can reach. Since 1989, Global Fund for Women has provided more than $1.2 million in flexible funding to more than 50 feminist organizations in Sudan.
A Global Fund for Women grantee partner shared what life looks like in Sudan today, and what it takes to sustain feminist organizing amid ongoing war and displacement. To protect her safety, we are keeping her name and organization anonymous.
Women leaders, journalists, and lawmakers in South Sudan on Thursday warned that online harassment, cyberbullying, and AI-generated misinformation are becoming growing threats to women’s political participation ahead of the country’s planned December 2026 elections.
The concerns were raised during a two-day workshop in Juba on communication, public speaking, and digital political outreach, organised by the Female Journalists Network (FJN) with support from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).
As South Sudan prepares for what could become its first post-independence elections, participants said digital platforms were increasingly shaping political debate while also exposing women leaders and journalists to abuse, intimidation, and disinformation.
“Public opinion is shaped online. Policies are debated online. Campaigns are mobilised online,” said Oliver Mori, spokesperson of South Sudan’s National Assembly. “But while the digital space has opened opportunities, it has also introduced challenges, especially for women.”
This post is part of Global Voices’ May 2026 Spotlight series, “Global crisis, local solutions.” This series will offer stories of resistance and successful climate action, insight into how communities in the Global South are fighting back against the crisis, analysis of what this might mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
Tibetans have become frontline defenders against climate change in China’s Sanjiangyuan region, known as the “Water Tower of Asia,” after three decades of domestic and international interventions to establish a co-management model for ecological conservation.
Sanjiangyuan (三江源), located in China’s western Qinghai province, is the source of the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, and the Lancang (or Mekong) River, which provide freshwater for China and the Indochina Peninsula. Approximately 90 percent of the 600,000 population that resides there are Tibetan herders.
She argued that despite years of advocacy and constitutional guarantees of equality, women remain largely sidelined during candidate emergence processes through practices such as exorbitant nomination fees, political intimidation, monetised delegate systems, and exclusion from strategic negotiations where candidacies are determined.
Political parties in Nigeria have been scolded for resisting genuine reforms that will guarantee women equitable participation in the country’s electoral process, according to the Executive Director of the Gender Strategy Advancement International (GSAI) Adaora Onyechere Sydney-Jack.
Sydney-Jack, while speaking to journalists in Abuja on Sunday accused political parties of sustaining structures that deliberately exclude women from emerging as candidates in ongoing primary elections across Nigeria ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Across the globe, deliberate illiberal strategies that exploit entrenched gender inequality are increasingly being used to weaken democratic institutions from within. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was not simply a byproduct of chaos at the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. Rather, it followed a well-documented authoritarian strategy in which attacks on gender equality are used to consolidate power, narrow civic space, and make democratic governance harder to defend. While the process of dismantling the agency that administered U.S. government foreign assistance has been well documented, significant gaps remain between what insiders witnessed and what the broader public understands. This gap in understanding is not benign. When the public perceives these events as isolated policy shifts rather than coordinated institutional erosion, it diffuses accountability, obscures the impact, reduces resistance, and allows similar tactics to be redeployed without scrutiny.
The administration’s early actions targeting gender equality, women’s empowerment, LGBTQI+ initiatives, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility functions operated not as peripheral policy disputes but as frontline tactics that weakened foreign assistance infrastructure, government institutions, and democratic norms. Trump has used this approach since at least 2016. It was mapped out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Drawing on firsthand experience and technical analysis, this report situates these actions within an effective authoritarian pattern of leveraging patriarchal norms and cross-ideological gender bias to justify institutional retrenchment, create administrative compliance, and accelerate structural dismantling. Ultimately, the strategic sidelining of gender equality functions increased institutional vulnerability. Although the Trump administration’s targeting of those functions did not create the vulnerability, it recognized, exposed, and exploited it as part of a wider effort to erode democratic norms. Rebuilding democratic systems and foreign assistance architecture, therefore, will require treating gender equality as a core resilience safeguard rather than a peripheral policy concern. Its strategic targeting is central to the broader authoritarian assault on democracy. Democracy stakeholders must name that pattern, examine the decisions that enabled it, and learn from what unfolded.
Since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, digital platforms have become central to political participation in the country, enabling female politicians, elections candidates, activists and public figures to mobilise communities and shape public debate.However, this visibility has drastically exposed women in politics to various forms of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) : Online harassment, sexualised abuse, defamation, threats and coordinated smear campaigns are routinely used to undermine women’s credibility, silence their voices and deter their participation in political life. Beyond the severe harm inflicted on individual women in politics, TFGBV constitutes a structural threat to all women’s political rights, democratic pluralism and freedom of expression. By reinforcing misogynistic norms and normalising sexist intimidation, it erodes hard-won gains of women’s political participation in Tunisia.
What is at stake extends beyond Tunisia. The 2011 Revolution of Dignity which ended the Ben Ali dictatorship marked a historic turning point, igniting the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and positioned Tunisia as a symbol of democratic possibility in the region and on the African continent. Earlier milestones, from the Personal Status Code of 1956 to progressive reforms including Organic Law No. 58-2017 on the elimination of violence against women and girls (Law 58), have long cast Tunisia as a reference point for women’s rights and legal reform. Tunisia’s trajectory sends signals across Africa and the Middle East about what becomes possible when women’s rights are defended and what collapses when they are politically sacrificed.
This webinar focused on barriers, challenges and strategies pertaining to the issue of gender parity for women in politics. Our guest speaker for the discussion was Dr. Mona Lena Krook.
Applying an intersectional lens the webinar discussion drew on research from Dr. Mona Lena Krook’s book, Elect Women for a Change: The Path to Gender Parity in Politics, Dr. Krook presented a core thesis: the global political community must move beyond aspirational "critical mass" targets (typically 30%) toward a non-negotiable 50/50 parity framework. This shift represents a transition from viewing women’s participation as an elective "add-on" to recognizing it as a fundamental requirement for democratic legitimacy.
Over the past decade Somaliland has seen a worrying convergence of political exclusion for women and active pushback against progressive sexual-offences laws and gender-equity measures. The result is not only weaker legal protection for survivors, but social environments that enable sexual violence and silence victims. This article examines recent examples and reports, connects them to the rollback of protections and low female political representation, and outlines the human-rights and social costs for Somaliland’s women and girls.
This article is released by the Women’s Human Rights, Education & Environment Association (WHEEA), with KOMBOA through the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network. It aims to expose the growing impact of backlash against the women’s rights movement in Somaliland, particularly following the rejection of progressive sexual-offences legislation. By documenting recent cases of sexual violence, political exclusion, and institutional failures, the article highlights how resistance to women’s rights has deepened impunity and vulnerability for women and girls. In addition to analysis, the article provides concrete policy recommendations for lawmakers, religious leaders, civil society, and international partners to strengthen protection, accountability, and women’s political participation in Somaliland.
This brief provides an overview of how the UN system has advanced global efforts to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls (VAWG) over the past five years. Drawing from the contributions of 36 UN entities and mechanisms for the Inventory of United Nations activities to end violence against women and girls, the brief highlights collective progress achieved through coordinated action, joint programming and partnerships with governments, civil society and women’s rights organizations. The brief documents the UN system’s role in advancing global norms and standards, with notable developments in violence in the work environment, technology-facilitated violence, conflict-related sexual violence and harmful practices. It showcases how coordination mechanisms and flagship joint initiatives—such as the spotlight initiative, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women and other inter-agency programmes—have mobilized resources, strengthened laws and policies, expanded access to survivor-centered services, scaled up prevention efforts and improved data and evidence. At the same time, the brief underscores persistent gaps, including uneven implementation of laws, limited financing, fragmented prevention efforts, data challenges and growing backlash against gender equality. It emphasizes the central role of women’s rights organizations and feminist movements in driving sustainable change. Looking ahead to 2030, the brief calls for the UN system to deepen coordination, strengthen accountability, invest in evidence-based interventions at scale and reinforce locally led, whole-of-society approaches to end VAWG.
Mitigating violence against women in politics in Africa – insights from Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe
A new book maps how electoral violence affects women in local politics in Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe, showing how they are systematically targeted in ways that limit their participation and help maintain male-dominated political systems.
Drawing on 134 interviews with politically active women, this new book – Making politics safer –documents a wide range of violence and abuse, including physical and sexual attacks, psychological pressure, economic manipulation and symbolic humiliation. It also highlights intimidation, online harassment, disinformation and violence within political parties as common tools used to sideline women.
Younger and unmarried women, those from marginalised ethnic groups, and those in opposition parties are found to face the highest risks. Even in countries where gender quotas exist, such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, a higher number of women in elected positions has not resulted in safer conditions.