The year 2021 commemorates the 10-year anniversary of UN Women’s Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Initiative—the first global initiative that aims to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence that women and girls often experience and fear in public spaces. This brief details some of the ways safe city partners from different sectors, in a short six months, have taken action in line with the recommendations set out…

Even before the pandemic, many families and communities struggled to provide their children with the good nutrition necessary for their physical and mental development. Now, the most vulnerable children are set to fall even further behind. Unless we take immediate action, we will see many more children die from preventable causes, and children and adults in the most vulnerable communities will face a global food and nutrition emergency that is unprecedented in our times. We…

This report provides a comprehensive summary of global progress on improving water, sanitation, hygiene, waste management and environmental cleaning (WASH) in health care facilities and is intended to stimulate solution-driven country and partner actions to further address major gaps. It illustrates how stakeholders in the WASH and health sectors are increasingly working together in specific countries, with the ultimate aim of delivering safe, quality essential health services.   Download

The consequences of COVID-19 and efforts to contain it have led to one of the most serious recessions in recent history, characterized by, among others, a decline in economic growth, decreased trade, low business revenues and massive layoffs. Projections indicate that, in the next two years, the global economy is expected to lose nearly US$ 8.5 trillion in economic output due to the pandemic. Understandably, the immediate focus for governments is economic recovery. There is…

The coronavirus1 pandemic is the biggest global upheaval of our age and will have profound implications across all countries and all areas of our lives. Despite being less at risk of severe illness caused directly by the disease, children are not exempt. Children alive today will forever be ‘the Covid Generation’, their lives deeply marked by its impacts. Their generation carries our hopes for a brighter future; but there is a real risk that –…

During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, prolonged school closures may result in a reversal of educational gains, limiting children’s educational and vocational opportunities as well as their social and emotional interactions and development. The longer a student stays out of school, the higher the risk of dropping out. Additionally, students who are out of school – and particularly girls – are at increased risk of vulnerabilities (e.g. subject to greater rates of violence and exploitation,…

The COVID-19 pandemic and in fact all crises – acute or prolonged – remind us that human rights need to be central in all recovery and development efforts. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will only be achieved if we are able to create equal opportunities for all, address failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination. Dorcas affirms that there is a…

And Covid-19 has presented new, unexpected and unprecedented challenges to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as exacerbating suffering and violence from ongoing conflicts. As we reflect on another International Human Rights Day, we have an opportunity to consider more complex aspects of the human rights picture – without losing sight of the need to protect established rights. Our future focus should expand to building up a rights-based agenda that doesn’t only deal with high-level aspirational…

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a global challenge to the world community and the whole system of individual and collective human rights, including the rights to life, to personal security, to be free from suffering and discrimination, to fair trial, to due process, freedoms of opinion, expression, assembly, association, and religion and belief, to property, to health, to food, to decent labour, to freedom from poverty, to access information, to education and to development. It also…

As COVID-19 widens global gender gaps, IFC and UN Women have partnered to showcase a growing number of companies and or-ganizations around the world that are taking action to ensure the economic inclusion and social well-being of their employees, customers, and suppliers, as well as local communities. This report aims to inform companies around the world on emerg-ing practices and initiatives for supporting women employees, entrepreneurs and those in value chains amid the pandemic. It…