Advocacy & Development
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.
With no political solution on the horizon to end the conflict in Syria, it is clear that humanitarian agencies must continue to prepare for a protracted conflict. In late 2013, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) undertook an extensive literature review and a month-long field assessment in Jordan, including indepth interviews, focus group meetings and observation. The goal of the project was to identify how the humanitarian community was integrating existing gender guidance across all sectors and whether gender was being dealt with centrally as an institutionalized way of working rather than peripherally. It looked at the ways in which humanitarian agencies, including UN agencies and international and local organizations, assessed these needs and planned their programs. It also asked questions about the opportunities and good practices and models for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the No Ceilings initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation joined forces to assess the evidence on the gains and gaps in progress for women and girls over the past 20 years. They asked: What do women’s and girls’ lives look like around the world 20 years after the Beijing conference? What barriers remain? What do the numbers tell us? How have laws and policies progressed over the same period? What information do we still need in order to assess the status of women and girls? The foundations worked with The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at UCLA (WORLD) to examine the performance of 197 countries and Beijing Platform signatories and develop a picture of how the lives of women and girls have changed since the Beijing conference.
The findings are presented in this report and are available in a visual representation at noceilings.org.
The rise of social media in the past decade has changed the political landscape - not only the way friends connect with one another, but also how people and public officials communicate. Elected officials and governments across the globe are able to engage directly with the people they represent on a scale previously inconceivable. This report, a joint effort between the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, Facebook, and the Women in Parliaments Global Forum, is designed to show how women legislators from around the world use social media to engage with citizens as well as how social media can play an even more effective role in facilitating a dialogue between governments and their citizens.
This report is based on the results of a survey that examined the use of social media by female Parliamentarians from 107 countries. The survey sought to discover factors affecting their level of social media use and to identify areas where greater knowledge could strengthen that use.
Click here to access the report.
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UN Women launched www.cidade5050.org.br where candidates will be able to make public commitments to gender equality. The project was developed in a partnership between UN Women Brazil, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), the Patrícia Galvão Institute and the Research Group on Democracy and Inequality at the University of Brasilia (Demodê/UNB). It has institutional support of Congress in Focus, and #MeRepresenta and In Press Group.
The digital platform "City 50-50: All for Equality", available at www.cidade5050.org.br aims to encourage debate on equal rights between women and men in local elections this year. The platform is a place where candidates can make commitments to gender equality and voters can get information to help them define their vote. It arises from the understanding that a society can only be called democratic when there is equal participation between women and men.
Candidates of the 5,568 Brazilian municipalities, which already have registered their candidatures with the TSE can register and make public commitments to promote women's rights during the election campaign. Voters, in turn, will be able to identify their candidates’ proposals for this topic, and afterwards make the elected accountable.
The Minister of the Superior Electoral Court, Luciana Lossio, highlighted some measures already taken to ensure women's political empowerment: "We had a major trial at the Superior Electoral Court that buoyed the condemnation to all political parties that do not comply with the 10 per cent allocation of radio and TV space to encourage women´s participation. Now we are joining in a partnership with UN Women, to seek a solution to this problem of the Brazilian Electoral Politics."
Among the more than 144 million Brazilian voters who will vote in October, 52% are women. However, only 31% of the candidates running for office (Mayors, Vice Mayor and City Council) are women - the percentage is within the law, which requires a minimum of 30% women candidates.
For this elections, 52 municipalities have only women as candidates for city council, according to a survey conducted in mid-August this year by the TSE. Only men compete for Mayor in 3,815 of the 5,568 municipalities, equivalent to 68% of the total. Currently, women occupy 10% of the municipalities and represent 12% of councilors in municipalities.
To read the full story, visit the UN Women regional website for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The report’s chapters were built in response to the Concluding Observation No. 60 by the CEDAW Committee, where the Committee request from the Iraqi government’s side to submit, within two years, a written report on steps and measures taken to respond to the recommendations included in the Concluding Observations (12 and 18). The Concluding Observations, of the CEDAW Committee, were issued after its 57th session on February 2014, in which the last government’s report, submitted to the Committee at the end of 2013, was discussed, concerning Iraq's obligations to implement the CEDAW Convention, also in that session Iraqi CSOs presented the first CEDAW shadow report for Iraq since signing the convention back in 1986.
This report includes a review of the situation of Iraqi women after an increase in the phenomenon of migration and displacement, in addition to the procedures and measures and legislation adopted to implement recommendations 12 and 18, and the civil society’s observations on the government’s report plus a number of activities run by the Iraqi Women Network and some of its members during this period of time.
Click here to read the Summary of the humanitarian situation and the situation of women in Iraq and the role of CSOs.
In this report, the Working Group examines discrimination against women and girls in cultural and family life. The cultural construction of gender determines the role of women and girls within the family, including in marriage. After analysing the impact of culture and religion on the enjoyment of equal rights by women and girls in society and the family, the Working Group redefines family by incorporating a gender perspective. In reaffirming equality between the sexes and family diversity, it is necessary to apply the principle of women’s right to equality in all forms of family law, in secular family law systems, State-enforced religious family law systems and plural systems. After recalling the obligation of States to combat discrimination against women in cultural and family life, the Working Group makes several recommendations, drawing on good practices, for the establishment of true equality between the sexes in cultural and family life.