Emanuela Paul is the Rethinking Power Program Coordinator with Beyond Borders/Depase Fwontyè yo. The programme focuses on preventing violence against women and girls, including women and girls with disabilities, in Haiti and implements a project with funding from the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. In light of COVID-19, she explains how her...

This commentary is co-signed by Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ghana; Kamina Johnson-Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Jamaica; Kang Kyung-wha, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea; Retno Marsudi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Indonesia; Grace Naledi Mandisa Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, South Africa; Marise...

The COVID-19 pandemic is a disaster that has severely disrupted the normal functioning of populations around the world and continues to proliferate indiscriminately. Disease outbreaks like COVID-19 threaten the health of all. But women and girls are disproportionately affected. During epidemics, the very measures taken to protect populations and keep health systems afloat leave women and girls especially...

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region, outside Latin America and the Caribbean, where countries have achieved or surpassed gender parity in a lower house of parliament. According to the 2019 Equal Measures 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Gender Index, many sub-Saharan countries perform well on proportions of women in government. Equal Measures 2030 is an independent...

The girls at greatest risk of early marriage are often those hardest to reach. They come from poor families, marginalized groups or rural areas. Millions of girls have been able to avoid “an unwanted marriage and an unwelcome end to their childhood”, since the launch four years ago, of a joint UN agency programme, the...