United Nations

The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization aimed at promoting peace between nations and protecting human rights across the globe.

War Profiteering: Children Bear the Brunt of Wars They Don’t Start

I was a refugee during the Cold War, displaced by the geopolitical struggle between the U.S. and the USSR. Like millions of other children from that time, I carried the heavy weight of that war. My family fled Afghanistan, and in the process, I lost years of regular schooling—years that were supposed to form the foundation of my childhood.

The weight of this suffering has always fallen on children. And just as the world once turned away from the children of Auschwitz, Nagasaki and Trảng Bàng, it turns away from children in Gaza, Afghanistan, Sudan and many other places today. We revisit those historical images as if they were warnings, as if by remembering them we could prevent history from repeating itself. But we haven’t learned. The children of today are still carrying the same burdens—only the names and places have changed.

Men in Detention Face Sexual Torture Amid War in Ukraine

The world is seeing “heightened levels of conflict-related sexual violence, fuelled by arms proliferation and increased militarization,” a recent United Nations report notes. Although the vast majority of victims of this crime are women and girls, this kind of violence is also all too common—and severely underreported—among men, boys and people of diverse gender identities.

“Most of the reported incidents against men and boys occurred in detention settings,” the U.N. report states. 

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: The Complicated Road to Electing a Woman President; Feminists Flee Twitter; RCV Preserved in Alaska by Slim Majority

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation. 

This week: mass exodus from Twitter; the combination of inflexible hours and low pay creates significant challenges for women running for office; three-day intergenerational dialogue in Juba on women’s leadership and political participation; and more.

A Trump Victory Could Reinvigorate a Global Antiabortion Pact: ‘Women Are Going to Die’

Abortion is one of the most pivotal issues that will determine whether Trump returns to the Oval Office. The Republican nominee routinely brags about his role—via three Supreme Court nominations—in overturning Roe v. Wade in a 2022 ruling that inevitably limited abortion access for millions of people in the United States.

Less known is the work that Trump and his appointees did to prevent women in other countries from obtaining the procedure.

Seven Young Activists Working at the Intersection of Environmental and Racial Justice

In this intense moment in the fight against racial injustice and the COVID-19 crisis, we can’t separate the fight for racial equity from the fight against climate change, and we must look at environmental justice as an anti-racist act. Leah Thomas, an intersectional environmental activist and eco-communicator, defines intersectional environmentalism as “an inclusive version of environmentalism that advocates for both the protection of people and the planet.” 

Find out more about Thomas and six other young activists whose work prioritizes an intersectional lens and links environmental and racial justice.

(This essay is part of a Women & Democracy multimedia package focused on Gen Z and student voters. The future envisioned by young leaders is bright—it’s built on reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, sustainability, freedom from violence and economic opportunity. Explore essays, a brand-new podcast, videos and more from some of your most loved [or soon to be!] influencers and writers, brought to you by Ms., DoSomething, the nonprofit that helps make volunteerism “cool,” and The Anthem Awards, the social impact arm of The Webbys.)

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: Advice to Our Younger Selves on International Day of the Girl; Restlessness Until Freedom

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation. 

This week: The RepresentWomen staff shares advice with their younger selves, reflections on the meaning of girlhood, and their visions for a more gender-balanced world; today’s girls are tomorrow’s women leaders; honoring Fannie Lou Hamer’s legacy as a civil rights pioneer; and more.

A Second Trump Presidency Could Be Deadly for Women Overseas

The first time Donald Trump was president, he imposed a strict, overseas antiabortion policy that caused 108,000 women and children to die and 360,000 people to contract HIV/AIDS, according to a journal of the National Academy of Sciences. If voters send him back to the White House, those numbers, staggering as they may be, would be dwarfed by what comes next, reproductive rights advocates contend.

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: It Will Take 137 Years to Lift All Women Out of Poverty; U.S. Women Still Waiting for Equal Protection Under Law

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation. 

This week: At current rates, it will take 137 years to lift all women and girls out of poverty; Fannie Lou Hamer’s legacy; women make up 53 percent of voters, yet their rights remain vulnerable without the Equal Rights Amendment; and more.

Erased From Public Life: Women Under the Taliban Regime

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Afghanistan has plummeted to last in global rankings of gender equity and women’s security since the withdrawal of international forces in 2021. A second Taliban regime has issued increasingly harsh decrees entrapping millions of women and girls in a system of repression that violates their basic human rights, segregates them from broader society and keeps opportunities and independence out of reach.

But even as the situation for Afghan women grows more dire, the international community is inching closer to recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate leaders in Afghanistan, leaving Afghan women with diminishing hopes that their oppression will end.

(This article originally appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)

Reflecting on Mahsa Amini’s Short but Meaningful Life—and the Future of Iranian Women’s Rights—With Nasrin Sotoudeh

Monday, Sept. 16, marks two years since the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini made international headlines and sparked an uprising in Iran. Her death triggered the longest citizen-led rebellion in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

Nasrin Sotoudeh and her husband Reza Khandan are no strangers to brutal and violent government suppression. The two Iranian activists and attorneys have faced harassment, violence and imprisonment from a government that will do virtually anything to crush women’s rights and freedom of expression.