Women and gender issues

Officials with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) say they have asked all staff - both men and women - to work from home, following the Taliban’s decision to ban Afghan women from employment with the Organization. An operational review is under way to plan for all possible outcomes.

The World Food Programme today urgently called for $26.7 million to support 541,000 people impacted by Cyclone Freddy in Mozambique who have no alternative for meeting their basic needs. This crisis is unfolding at the beginning of the main harvest season, exacerbating the already high levels of hunger.

The United Nations resident coordinator’s team in Peru is responding to ongoing heavy rains and floods, which have left more than 500,000 people in need of aid. The World Food Programme (WFP) is also providing emergency cash transfers and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is treating cases of acute malnutrition.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:

In Papua New Guinea, the International Organization for Migration and humanitarian partners are helping with rapid assessments coordinated by provincial authorities after the magnitude-7 earthquake in the Chambri Lake area, which, due to the remote location, requires seaplane and canoe to be reached.

United Nations humanitarian partners in Somalia have reported an early start to the country’s annual rainy season, which has brought flash floods, killing 14 people, destroying property and displacing thousands. The rains also come amid several disease outbreaks, including cholera, which are now likely to increase.

A report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Somalia’s Federal Ministry of Health and Human Services suggests that an estimated 43,000 excess deaths may have occurred in the country in 2022 due to the deepening drought.

Following lengthy negotiations that continued late into the night, the Commission on the Status of Women concluded its sixty-seventh session, approving a set of agreed conclusions focused on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in the context of innovation, technological change, and education in the digital age.

Speakers underscored the importance of citizen-generated and gender-disaggregated data to tackle inequality, while others offered suggestions on closing gender gaps in care work, technology and geospatial services and nutrition, as the Commission on the Status of Women today held an interactive dialogue, “Getting back on track: Achieving gender equality in a context of overlapping emergencies”.

Strong legislative, policy and institutional frameworks rooted in gender-based data are critical not only to empower women and girls on digital platforms, but ensure those platforms have an intersectional lens that appropriately represent the full range of identities, speakers told the Commission on the Status of Women as it continued its sixty-seventh session.