Women and gender issues

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its monthly Food Price Index today, and the benchmark for global food commodity prices rose in February, propelled by price increases for sugar, dairy and vegetable oil. Another FAO report states that 45 countries currently require external assistance for food.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message at the International Women’s Day Event, in New York today:

Nearly 15 million people in Afghanistan — one in every three — will experience high levels of acute food insecurity during the first quarter of 2025. UN humanitarian partners warn that aid funding cuts will cost both lives and livelihoods and undermine development gains.

The Secretary-General will convene the two Cypriot leaders and the Guarantor Powers of Greece, Türkiye and the United Kingdom for an informal meeting in Geneva from 17 to 18 March, which will provide an opportunity for a meaningful discussion on the way forward on the Cyprus issue.

In Ukraine, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs today facilitated its eighth interagency aid convoy this year to deliver humanitarian assistance to 800 residents of a front-line community in the Kharkiv region, where mostly older people remain amid worsening security conditions.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today published a report which says air pollution in East Asia and the Pacific is linked to nearly one in four deaths of children under the age of five and can impact every stage of a child’s life.

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, observed on 11 February:

In Sudan, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Clementine Nkweta-Salami, today condemned the relentless and intensifying shelling and air and drone strikes against civilians in Darfur, Kordofan and other conflict-affected areas as “a ruthless assault on human life”.

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message for the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, observed on 6 February:

Meeting on the heels of the Taliban’s new directive prohibiting women and girls from attending public and private medical institutes in Afghanistan, the Security Council examined the impacts of the de facto authorities’ increasingly repressive policies, amounting to “gender apartheid”, as speakers urged the Taliban to reverse course.