Malawi teen, Martha, was born with HIV. Now a mother herself, she has defied the odds and her son, Rahim Idriss, is part of Malawis AIDS-free generation. In this picture, she awaits the results of Rahmins HIV test. After two months of waiting, she finds out the Rahmin, now 8-months old, is HIV negative. Photo: UNICEF/HIVA201500101/Schermbrucker
27 November 2015 – The number of adolescent deaths from AIDS has tripled over the last 15 years with 26 new infections occurring every hour, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced today and warned that “it is critical that young people who are HIV-positive have access to treatment, care and support.”
“At the same time, those who are HIV-negative must have access to the knowledge and means to help them to stay that way,” said Craig McClure, head of UNICEF's global HIV/AIDS programmes, at a conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, where new data was released by UNICEF.
Concern for advocacy for rights of Human Rights Defenders, and very much for Women Human Rights Defenders
11.26/2015 (Geneva, New-York, Paris) The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (a joint FIDH-OMCT programme) commends the passing of a United Nations General Assembly resolution on the protection of human rights defenders in the Third Committee yesterday. At a time when human rights defenders have come under increasing pressure amidst a growing crackdown on civil society in many parts of the world, this resolution is more important than ever.
117 Member States voted yes on the resolution, entitled “Recognizing the role of human rights defenders and the need for their protection,” calls for accountability for attacks on human rights defenders (including attacks on their family members) and urges states to release defenders who have been arbitrarily detained for exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. Norway, as the main sponsor of the resolution, faced many challenges in the negotiation phase with some States, notably members of the African Group, attempting to significantly weaken the text. Nevertheless, Norway and the co-sponsors of the resolution, resisted pressure and delivered a strong text.
By Shahra Razavi, Chief of the Research & Data Section at UN Women
When Agenda 2030 – The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) - were adopted by the UN General Assembly in September of this year, women’s rights advocates were pleased to see much of what they had been advocating reflected in the new agenda. Moving beyond the narrow goals and targets of the MDGs, not only has the process of defining the new agenda been more inclusive, and its scope universal and grounded in human rights, but the goals and targets themselves reflect a far more variegated set of structural concerns. This is evident in the remarkably broad scope of the targets under the gender-specific Goal 5 and the inclusion of a number of gender-related targets in the other goals, encompassing most of the key strategic elements identified by women’s rights organizations.
Less clear are the policies needed to achieve these targets. Unfortunately, the means of implementation targets of the SDGs do not provide adequate direction on those policies or on how the resources needed to finance them will be generated. Efforts by developing countries and civil society organizations to give more bite to global coordination efforts on development finance by establishing an intergovernmental body within the United Nations on international cooperation in tax matters did not get very far in the Financing for Development Conference and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
Written by Rosamund Shreeves – November 25, 2015
On this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 25 November, crisis and conflict are more than ever on our minds – and on the political agenda.
As recent research from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) highlights, conflict and displacement exacerbate violence against vulnerable groups, including women. In Syria, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria, women and girls have been abducted for the purposes of sexual exploitation, forced marriage or forms of slavery. Asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants have been primary targets for traffickers able to act with impunity due to the breakdown of the rule of law. Refugee families trapped in desperate conditions and insecurity are adopting ‘negative coping strategies’, such as forced early marriages, hoping to protect their daughters from sexual violence or to escape from poverty. In the face of this increased danger of gender-based violence, the IOM has called for a proportionate, gender-sensitive humanitarian response, which systematically includes counter-trafficking strategies.
GENEVA (25 November 2015) – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequences, Dubravka Šimonović, urged today, on this International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women, for all Member States to focus on prevention of gender-related killing of women by establishing a 'Femicide Watch'.
Speaking ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Ms.Šimonović stressed that States must commit to prevent gender-related killing of women.
“Violence against women is the most atrocious manifestation of the systematic and widespread discrimination and inequality that women and girls around the world continue to face. Women and their children continue to die as victims of gender related killing, often in cruel ways.
The weaknesses of national prevention systems, lack of proper risk assessment and the scarcity or poor quality of data are major barriers in preventing gender-related killing of women and developing meaningful prevention strategies. These weaknesses result in misidentification, concealment and underreporting of gender-motivated killings thus perpetuating impunity for such killings.
