Youth

International IDEA convened the sixth Young Women’s Empowerment Academy in Bangkok, Thailand, under the EU-funded WYDE Women’s Leadership Initiative.

The three-day Academy brought together 30 young women leaders and politicians from Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Timor-Leste. Participants came together to exchange experiences, build leadership skills and explore strategies to overcome barriers to women’s political participation and representation.

Through dialogue, learning and peer exchange, the Academy created a space for young women to strengthen their voices, connect across borders and contribute to more inclusive and representative political systems.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines self-care as the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote and maintain their own health, prevent disease and cope with illness, with or without the support of a health or care worker.

Self-care recognizes people as active agents in managing their own health care through lifestyle choices and interventions that complement care given in formal health facilities. Self-care includes health promotion; disease prevention and control; caregiving to dependent persons; rehabilitation; and palliative care. Tools and actions that can support self-care can comprise evidence-based interventions including drugs, devices and diagnostics that can be accessed fully or partially outside formal health services, as well as informed actions people take such as healthy life-style choices and health promoting behaviours.

WHO recommends self-care for every country and economic setting, as a critical path to reach universal health coverage (UHC).

Self-care can:   

• provide agency and autonomy to individuals and communities as active agents in managing their own health and well-being;

• lead progress towards UHC and better health and well-being outcomes; and

• lead to more efficient use of resources for health.

This 2025 report is the sixth IPU review of youth participation in national parliaments. It maps the presence of young members of parliament (MPs) worldwide, providing the most recent data on the proportion of MPs aged 30 and under, and MPs aged 40 and under, at the time of the most recent election or renewal.

The report also provides insights on good practices to increase youth participation in parliament. Age data in this report comes from 210 parliamentary chambers in 155 countries and is current as of 31 July 2025.

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When a woman parliamentary aspirant in Nyeri County withdrew from an election race after a fabricated sex video was circulated online, the attack went beyond humiliating one individual. It was a calculated attempt to police women's participation in public life by weaponising gender stereotypes and technology, as documented in a 2025 briefing paper on online violence against women in politics in Kenya by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, in which she recounted her experience.

Her story mirrors a growing pattern across Africa, where women in politics are facing coordinated online attacks. In South Sudan, artificial intelligence (AI) was reportedly used to manipulate an image of a senior woman leader, digitally undressing her and placing her suggestively alongside a man. After the image spread online, she was dismissed from office.

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Online violence is real violence. The manosphere – an umbrella term for communities that promote harmful definitions of masculinity – serves as its nursery.

As UN Women, we are taking action against digital abuse, one of the fastest growing forms of gender-based violence, and countering the spread of the manosphere’s toxic influence.

The manosphere targets male audiences in all digital spaces, including social media, podcasts, gamer communities, and even dating apps. Many men and boys engage with the content in search of forums to learn about men’s issues. But the solutions and discussions veer far from healthy advice, promoting instead ideas of harsh self-discipline, emotional control and physical dominance over others, especially women and girls.

Like many communities, the manosphere spreads its ideas with its own unique terminology and cultural references. This includes coded language for gendered hate speech, pseudoscience and other harmful lies – even certain phrases that might be considered harmless outside of these online communities.

While internet slang and the manosphere’s glossary are always expanding, familiarizing yourself with some of these common terms can help you spot misogynist content in your feed.

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Nigerians will return to the polls in 2027. Campaigns will commence, crowds will fill the streets for party rallies, but the most consequential decisions about the elections are already happening. They are taking place in party offices, at the homes of powerful political godfathers, and in selection processes that most Nigerians never attend and sometimes don’t hear about.

This is where the most vulnerable group, young women, lose. Nearly half of Nigeria’s population is female and more than 70% is younger than 30 years. Yet women and young people continue to be grossly underrepresented in the country’s politics. Nationally, 6.7% of elected positions and appointments are occupied by women. The global average is 22.5% and Africa’s is 23.4%.

Those who want to contest for elective offices signify their interest at their wards, where they must secure support before going to the local governments or senatorial zones or states. This depends on the offices they want to vie for.

Two changes have been made in the past 10 years to address the underrepresentation of women and young people. The first was the 2018 Age Reduction Law, also known as Not Too Young to Run. It lowered the minimum candidacy age to 25 for State Houses of Assembly and the House of Representatives. Then in 2022 the country’s two dominant parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), announced fee waivers for women and a 50% discount for young aspirants. These are fees paid to political parties to purchase nomination forms.

Full article.