Regional News

This year, the theme for the International Girls in ICT Day focuses on leadership, highlighting the critical need for strong female role models in STEM careers. UN Women interviewed Natacha Sangwa from Rwanda about learning to code and defying gender stereotypes.

For multiple generations, women in the Pacific coast of Nariño have promoted sustainable harvesting and use of a native mollusk called piangua. They are also at the forefront of mitigating climate change and leading mangrove conservation.

Today, UN Women launches its latest Gender Alert on Gaza. Six months into the war, 10,000 Palestinian women in Gaza have been killed, among them an estimated 6,000 mothers, leaving 19,000 children orphaned. Women who have survived Israeli bombardment and ground operations have been displaced, widowed, and facing starvation. This devastating differentiated impact continues to make the war on Gaza also a war on women.

Sudan’s current conflict, which marks its one-year point this week, is having a devastating impact on the people of Sudan, particularly women and girls.

Since 15 April 2023, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has resulted in the deaths of at least 14,600 people. More than 19 million children are out of school, in what UNICEF calls the “largest child displacement crisis in the world”.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported that at least 118 people had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, and attempted rape in Sudan as of mid-December 2023, including 19 children.

On 15 April 2023, war broke out in Sudan in between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In the year that followed, some 8.2 million people have fled their homes, and an estimated 24.8 million are projected to need humanitarian assistance in 2024. 

Laws and treaties prohibiting gender discrimination have failed to alter the stark fact that, globally, women are still paid significantly less than men for the same work. Achieving gender equality in the workplace requires a transformation—of attitudes, economic structures, and opportunities—to enable women’s economic empowerment.

According to the 2001 census in Ukraine, nearly 48,000 people identified themselves as Roma, however, unofficial sources claim that the actual number could be between 200,000 – 400,000. Anzhelika Bielova is from Zaporizhzhia, southern Ukraine, and works in the country’s southeastern and western regions. In 2020, she started the Voice of Romni, an association led by Roma women in Ukraine, to support women’s economic empowerment and leadership. With the war in Ukraine in its second year, the organization is working to improve access to humanitarian aid, cash assistance, and economic recovery of Roma and internally displaced Roma women in Ukraine.