Advocacy & Lobbying
MANILA – When Filipino women human rights defenders (HRDs) step forward to demand accountability, they are met with a new kind of violence. Technology is now weaponized to silence, shame, and intimidate.
“The more we speak, the more they target us,” Sheerah Escudero, sister of drug war victim Ephraim Escudero, told Bulatlat in Filipino. “Even the dead were not spared. They tell me, ‘How about the victims of drug addicts like your brother?’”
Before and during the confirmation of charges hearing of former President Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court (ICC), there were social media posts stating that Escudero’s brother deserved to die. Other posts made personal attacks, claiming that she was paid to present herself to the media.
A fabricated picture of Escudero and drug war mother Llore Pasco was posted by pro-Duterte vlogger Cathy Binag, flaunting expensive handbags at The Hague, together with Rise Up for Life and for Rights coordinator Rubilyn Litao. One News flagged the post, issuing an advisory that it is fake. Even if it is no longer available, Binag’s post reached more than 100,000 engagements.
The current moment of feminism in Latin America and in much of the world is characterized by an increasingly evident tension between regulatory advances that recognize rights and a political climate that hinders their real implementation. This reflects a kind of mismatch between what is written into law and what actually takes place in women’s everyday lives.
Recently, legal progress has been made which, in another context, could be read as unequivocal signs of the consolidation of the feminist movement—such as the recently announced intention of the Mexican State to standardize the crime of femicide across the entire country with clear criteria and harsher penalties. This is, undoubtedly, an initiative aimed at closing historical gaps in the judicial interpretation of violence against women and reflects the sustained pressure of feminist organizations for the legal system to recognize the specificity of these crimes.
The third day of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) featured a day-long, two-part session with parliamentarians discussing women’s political representation and access to justice. The day concluded with a program discussing the growing threat of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV).
Parliamentary Progress
To open the day, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women unveiled the 2026 Women in Politics Map, revealing a mixed global picture of women’s political participation.
Women now hold 27.5 percent of parliamentary seats globally, and the number of countries with gender-parity or women-majority parliaments grew from six to seven. Countries that have reached parity or have a women-majority parliament are Andorra, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Rwanda, Nicaragua and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Several countries that held elections in 2025 recorded gains, including Kyrgyzstan (+12.9 percent), St. Vincent and the Grenadines (+12.3 percent), and St. Lucia (+9.1 percent).
The Folashade Bada Ambrose has warned that delays in passing the Reserved Seats Bill for women could significantly weaken female representation in governance ahead of the 2027 elections.
Ambrose raised the concern on Tuesday during the 2026 International Women’s Day event held in Alausa, Ikeja, noting that time constraints may hinder the bill’s effectiveness.
She explained that recent adjustments to the election timetable by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have reduced the window available to implement reforms aimed at increasing women’s political participation.
The time available to operationalise critical proposals that expand participation, especially through the Reserved Seats Bill for women, is now shorter,” she said.
According to her, if the bill is not implemented before party primaries, it would have little or no impact on candidate selection or election outcomes.
“If they do not influence candidacy, they cannot influence outcomes. And if outcomes remain unchanged, a significant portion of the women population will remain underrepresented for another electoral cycle,” she added.
When Aminata Sesay decided to run for the Port Loko District seat in 2023, she knew it would be tough. She did not expect to be shot at.
The retired nurse had returned from the United Kingdom to enter the race, only to find her native Sierra Leone a "bloody and violent" electoral climate, just as friends and family had forewarned it would be.
As she would later find, this is the norm for women in politics across Africa, compounding the financial and political strains already obstructing their paths to power.
On Monday, 13 April 2026, key stakeholders, civil society, political parties, the legal community, and development partners convened at the Abuja Continental Hotel, Abuja, for the Strategy Advocacy Meeting on Advancing Women’s Leadership: Strengthening Pathways to Inclusive Representation in 2027.
The meeting served as a strategic platform to galvanize support for increased women’s political participation in Nigeria, with a strong focus on the Special Seats Bill currently before the 10th National Assembly as part of the ongoing Constitution Review process.
The event was convened by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) in collaboration with the Nigerian Women Trust Fund (NWTF) and the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL), with support from the European Union under the EU-Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) Programme.
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Somalia grapples with unique cultural, societal, and structural hurdles that hinder women’s access to political processes. Despite introducing a non-legally binding quota, the most recent federal elections in 2022 saw a decline in women’s parliamentary representation. Beyond this, women’s leadership in public spaces remains inadequate at all levels. Patriarchal norms, gender stereotypes, and cultural barriers hinder women’s full participation in decision-making, with women predominantly perceived as homemakers, with caregiving responsibilities.
Click here to read the full article published by Relief Web on 01 August 2023.
A core component of the three-year regional OECD-MENA Transition Fund project on “Promoting women’s participation in parliaments and policy-making,” is conducting a country-based, peer-reviewed assessment of the existing opportunities and current challenges faced by women candidates. The purpose of this report is to present the findings of this assessment, with a view to identifying targeted policy recommendations that can be implemented to accelerate progress towards gender equality and women’s political empowerment in Jordan. Recommendations are based on findings of the assessment and international good practices.
This report presents both the enabling factors and obstacles in the election of more women to parliament and municipal councils. A second assessment analysed the parliament’s workplace operations, processes, internal procedures and policy-frameworks through a gender lens. The report reviews Jordan’s current legal framework, including adherence to international standards, and assesses the existence and effectiveness of the country’s institutions in promoting women’s political participation. Legal, institutional and social norms that serve as barriers to women’s political participation are highlighted in chapters 1, 2 and 4.
Click here to access the report.
Violence against women politicians is increasingly recognized as an issue that undermines women’s presence in politics. Latin America has been at the vanguard of this global discussion. In 2012, Bolivia became the only country in the world to criminalize “political violence and harassment against women.” Several other countries have similar legislation in the works. What explains the emergence of these bill proposals? This article argues that the creation of these bills is the result of three processes: activism at the local level used international norms to propose an innovative solution to a problem; women politicians and “femocrats” worked within the state apparatus to overcome resistance; and international actors worked to foster connections among activists and politicians across the region. In this process, international norms have been transformed, with important implications for women’s political representation.
Click here to access the article.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) in digital contexts is not a new phenomenon, however it has rapidly escalated in the shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic as women’s lives shifted online for work, education, access to services, and social activities. While there continue to be significant gaps in data, one global report suggests that prevalence ranges from 16 per cent to 58 per cent.
Online VAWG occurs as part of a continuum that is often connected to offline violence and can encompass many forms including sexual harassment, stalking, zoom bombing, and these continue to multiply in a context of rapidly expanding digitalization. The impact of online VAWG can be as harmful as offline violence with negative effects on the health and wellbeing of women and girls as well as serious economic, social and political impacts.
This paper provides a brief overview of the existing data and evidence on online and technology facilitated VAWG, outlines some of the key developments, gaps, challenges, and emerging promising practices, and makes recommendations to be considered by governments, international organizations, civil society organizations, and the technology sector.
Click here to access the report.
- Gender equality has suffered since the pandemic began.
- It will now take an estimated 135.6 years to close the worldwide gender gap between men and women.
- However, progress is being made in areas including science and politics.
- Improving paternity policies and representation of women will help.
There is still a huge amount of work to do to achieve gender equality around the world.
The time it will take to close the gender gap grew by 36 years in just 12 months, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. This means it will now take an estimated 135.6 years for men and women to reach parity, according to the report, which assesses areas including economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and political empowerment.
Click here to read the full article published by The World Economic Forum on 3 March 2022.