For the better part of 2020, East African countries have been battling to contain the spread of Covid-19 with over 46,633 cases reported across Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda as of September 6. Among them, Kenya and Rwanda account for the larger chunk with 35,103 and 4,349 cases reported in the respective...
Women and girls have been disproportionately hit by COVID-19 as the pandemic worsens existing gender inequality. Humanitarian crises can affect the lives of men and women differently – and the coronavirus pandemic is no exception. Women have shown better COVID-19 outcomes than men – in part thanks to an additional X chromosome and sex hormones like oestrogen, which...
UN Women at the UN General Assembly 2020 For immediate release Date: Thursday, September 10, 2020 Media contact: media.team@unwomen.org As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to hold the world hostage, global leaders will gather at the largest annual intergovernmental meeting for the first time ever in a virtual session. The 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 75) will...
The Commonwealth and ‘NO MORE Foundation’, on Wednesday, launched a first-of-its-kind digital portal designed to help tackle increased domestic and sexual violence due to the impacts of COVID-19, The portal aims to assist governments, organisations and individuals to confront the issue by assisting the development of long-term prevention strategies and provide other modes of support....
Against the backdrop of the low number of women with access to financial empowerment, healthcare and quality education in the country, a global not-for-profit social enterprise, Centre for Health Sciences Training, Research and Development (CHESTRAD) is launching a new programme that will tackle this need. Called ‘Tariro’, a South African word for ‘hope’, the programme...
The United Nations has called on member nations to redouble efforts to curb the widening gap of poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a report published on Wednesday, September 2, 2020, the humanitarian body says, the coronavirus pandemic will widen the poverty gap between women and men, pushing 47 million more women and...
Date: Friday, September 4, 2020 Exactly 25 years after the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, its significance is undimmed. In that quarter century we have seen the strength and impact of collective activism grow and have been reminded of the importance of multilateralism and partnership to find common solutions...
Patience Mkandawire, 27, grew up in Zimbabwe’s rural Nkayi District and has gone on to study IT and software engineering– now she is helping girls from Nkayi do the same and to get the education resources they need during Zimbabwe’s pandemic-induced school closures. Mkandawire says the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the vast digital gap...
Highlighting the disproportionate and devastating socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on women and girls globally, The UN chief António Guterres called on Monday for a major push to prevent “years, even generations” worth of progress on women’s empowerment, from being lost to the pandemic. In an address to a virtual town hall with young women from civil society...
All crises have gendered impacts – simply put, they affect women and men, girls and boys in different ways. COVID-19 is no different. Six months into the pandemic, what have we learned? What do policymakers and activists need to do to ensure that decades of progress on gender equality is not rolled back and efforts...
