One week into the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women meeting, it seems possible that the negotiations will once again end at an impasse.
This week, an international team of experts, in conjunction with the WHO and the UN Environment Programme, released a report declaring hormone-disrupting chemicals a “global threat” that should be addressed.
Culture is one of the most sensitive aspects of people’s lives, particularly as it relates to sexual and reproductive behavior, attitudes, and norms. Therefore, when we talk about female circumcision (I still cannot call it mutilation), we should always look at this cultural practice as one of many good and bad things that happen to women universally, and not only to African women but women worldwide.
Access to family planning services is a long-recognized basic human right… but we have a long way to go to ensure everyone has access.
Can we do anything useful to stop sexual assault in conflict, and, if so, is the United Nations the entity to do it?
A rare bipartisan effort underway in the Senate—to ratify a United Nations treaty on disability rights—has become the latest target of politicians who would like to undermine a woman’s ability to make personal health care decisions.
We will only be able to get people into treatment early, and retain them in treatment, if we finally move from rhetoric to real action on HIV and human rights.
![Sex workers organized by Kthi Win. [img src]](http://rhrealitycheck.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/../../files/teaser-images/2012-05-22-mgbako_0-187x125.jpg)
To label and disregard sex workers as “victims” who cannot comprehend their true “enslavement” is condescending, disempowering, and untrue.
Last week the UN released its latest estimates on global maternal deaths, just two years after the last figure. From 1990 to 2010, they found, the number of women dying from pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes worldwide dropped from 543,000 to 287,000, a near-fifty percent reduction in fatalities.
Weekly global roundup: Who will be 2012′s 100 most powerful Arab women? Slut-shaming and victim-blaming persist in India; Liberia is slow to reconcile decades of sexual violence; the UN Commission on the Status of Women is happening now; Female Pakistand director wins country’s first Academy Award.
