UNITED NATIONS: More than 600 million women and girls are now affected by war, a 50 percent increase from a decade ago, and they fear the world has forgotten them amid an escalating backlash against women’s rights and gender equality, top UN officials say.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a new report that amid record levels of armed conflict and violence, progress over the decades for women is vanishing and “generational gains in women’s rights hang in the balance around the world.”
The UN chief was assessing the state of a Security Council resolution adopted on Oct. 31, 2000, that demanded equal participation for women in peace negotiations, a goal that remains as distant as gender equality.
Guterres said current data and findings show that “the transformative potential of women’s leadership and inclusion in the pursuit of peace” is being undercut — with power and decision-making on peace and security matters overwhelmingly in the hands of men.
“As long as oppressive patriarchal social structures and gender biases hold back half our societies, peace will remain elusive,” he warned.
The report says the proportion of women killed in armed conflicts doubled in 2023 compared with a year earlier; UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence were 50 percent higher; and the number of girls affected by grave violations in conflicts increased by 35 percent.
At a two-day UN Security Council meeting on the topic that ended Friday, Sima Bahous, head of the UN agency promoting gender equality known as UN Women, also pointed to a lack of attention to women’s voices in the search for peace.
She cited the fears of millions of women and girls in Afghanistan deprived of an education and a future; of displaced women in Gaza “waiting for death”; of women in Sudan who are victims of sexual violence; and of the vanishing hopes of women in Myanmar, Haiti, Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere.
Bahous said 612 million women and girls who are affected by war “wonder if the world has already forgotten them, if they have fallen from the agenda of an international community overwhelmed by crises of ever deeper frequency, severity and urgency.”
The world needs to answer their fears with hope, she said, but the reality is grim: “One in two women and girls in conflict-affected settings are facing moderate to severe food insecurity, 61 percent of all maternal mortality is concentrated in 35 conflict-affected countries.”
As for women’s participation in decision-making and politics in countries in conflict, Bahous said it’s stalled.
“The percentage of women in peace negotiations has not improved over the last decade: under 10 percent on average in all processes, and under 20 percent in processes led or supported by the United Nations,” she said.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed announced the launch of a “Common Pledge on Women’s Participation in Peace Processes,” and urged governments, regional organizations and others involved in mediation to join the UN in taking concrete steps toward that end. The commitments include appointing women as lead mediators and team members, promoting direct and meaningful participation of women in peace processes, consulting women leaders at all stages and embedding women with expertise “to foster gender-responsive peace processes and agreements,” she said.
Many UN ambassadors who spoke at the council meeting focused on the lack of “political will” to promote women in the peace process.
“We’ve seen how the lack of political will continues to stand in the way of the full implementation of the commitments entered into by member states,” Panama’s UN Ambassador Eloy Alfaro de Alba said Friday.
War affects over 600 million women and girls, UN says
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War affects over 600 million women and girls, UN says
- Guterres said current data and findings show that “the transformative potential of women’s leadership and inclusion in the pursuit of peace” is being undercut
- “As long as oppressive patriarchal social structures and gender biases hold back half our societies, peace will remain elusive”
NASA’s new moon rocket heads to the pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February
- The 98-meter rocket began its 1.6 kph creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak
- The six-kilometer trek could take until nightfall
CAPE CANAVERAL, USA: NASA’s giant new moon rocket headed to the launch pad Saturday in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.
The out-and-back trip could blast off as early as February.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its 1 mph (1.6 kph) creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak. The four-mile (six-kilometer) trek could take until nightfall.
Thousands of space center workers and their families gathered in the predawn chill to witness the long-awaited event, delayed for years. They huddled together ahead of the Space Launch System rocket’s exit from the building, built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The cheering crowd was led by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman and all four astronauts assigned to the mission.
Weighing in at 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms), the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule on top made the move aboard a massive transporter that was used during the Apollo and shuttle eras. It was upgraded for the SLS rocket’s extra heft.
The first and only other SLS launch — which sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon — took place back in November 2022.
“This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,” NASA’s John Honeycutt said on the eve of the rocket’s rollout.
Heat shield damage and other capsule problems during the initial test flight required extensive analyzes and tests, pushing back this first crew moonshot until now. The astronauts won’t orbit the moon or even land on it. That giant leap will take come on the third flight in the Artemis lineup a few years from now.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch — longtime NASA astronauts with spaceflight experience — will be joined on the 10-day mission by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first rocket ride.
They will be the first people to fly to the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the triumphant lunar-landing program in 1972. Twelve astronauts strolled the lunar surface, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.
NASA is waiting to conduct a fueling test of the SLS rocket on the pad in early February before confirming a launch date. Depending on how the demo goes, “that will ultimately lay out our path toward launch,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said on Friday.
The space agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before bumping into March.
