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	Justice systems meant to uphold rights and the rule of law are failing women and girls everywhere by UN Women, OHCHR, Women Deliver, agencies   Mar. 2026   On 8 March 2026, International Women’s Day, UN Women issues a global alert: Justice systems meant to uphold rights and the rule of law are failing women and girls everywhere. Women globally hold just 64 per cent of the legal rights of men, exposing them to discrimination, violence, and exclusion at every stage of their lives.   This is one of the findings of the new United Nations Secretary-General’s report, “Ensuring and Strengthening Access to Justice for All Women and Girls”. The same report reveals that in over half of the world’s countries – 54 per cent – rape is still not defined on the basis of consent, meaning a woman can be raped and the law may not recognize it as a crime.   A girl can still be forced to marry, by national law, in nearly 3 out of 4 countries. And in 44 per cent of countries, the law does not mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value, meaning women can still legally be paid less for the same work.   “When women and girls are denied justice, the damage goes far beyond any single case. Public trust erodes, institutions lose legitimacy, and the rule of law itself is weakened. A justice system that fails half the population cannot claim to uphold justice at all,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous.   As backlash against longstanding commitments on gender equality intensifies, violations of the rights of women and girls are accelerating, fueled by a global culture of impunity, spanning from courts to online spaces to conflict.   Laws are being rewritten to restrict the freedoms of women and girls, silence their voices, and enable abuse without consequence. As technology outpaces regulation, women and girls face growing digital violence in a climate of impunity where perpetrators are rarely held accountable.   In conflicts, rape continues to be used as a weapon of war, with reported cases of sexual violence rising by 87 per cent in just two years.   The UN Secretary General’s report also shows that progress is possible: 87 per cent of countries have enacted domestic violence legislation, and more than 40 countries have strengthened constitutional protections for women and girls over the past decade. But laws alone are not enough.   Discriminatory social norms – stigma, victim-blaming, fear, and community pressure – continue to silence survivors and obstruct justice, allowing even the most extreme forms of violence, including femicide, to go unpunished.   This International Women’s Day 2026, under the theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls,” UN Women calls for urgent and decisive action: end impunity, defend the rule of law, and deliver equality – in law, in practice, and in every sphere of life – for all women and girls.   “Now is the moment to stand up, show up, and speak up for rights, for justice, and for action – so that every woman and girl can live safely, speak freely, and live equally,” stressed UN Women Executive Director, Sima Bahous.   http://www.unwomen.org/en/get-involved/international-womens-day http://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/case-open-justice-for-all-women-and-girls http://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/what-justice-means-to-women-and-how-to-deliver-it http://www.unicef.org/press-releases/remarks-unicef-executive-director-catherine-russell-csw-70-education-justice-side http://news.un.org/en/story/2026/03/1167081 http://docs.un.org/en/E/CN.6/2026/3 http://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-release/2026/03/csw70-conclusions http://www.justsecurity.org/134940/commission-status-women-global-rights/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/states-back-un-roadmap-womens-rights-access-justice   http://www.careinternational.org.uk/press-office/press-releases/womens-openness-to-speak-about-politics-in-public-has-dropped-to-lowest-levels-since-1997-new-analysis/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2026/03/report-afghanistans-human-rights-situation-continues-deteriorate-dramatically http://globaltaxjustice.org/news/tax-justice-for-the-human-right-to-care/ http://womendeliver.org/press/melbourne-declaration-signals-shift-from-commitments-to-accountability-on-gender-equality/ http://womendeliver.org/wd2026/melbourne-declaration-for-gender-equality/ Visit the related web page
	Women Peacebuilders: The Missing Voices at the Negotiating Table by Sania Farooqui IPS Inter Press Service, agencies   Women Peacebuilders: The Missing Voices at the Negotiating Table, by Sania Farooqui. (IPS News)   For most individuals, the process of peace starts with the signing of a ceasefire or an agreement among politicians. However, those who live in regions experiencing violence understand that peace is made long before politicians meet at the negotiating table.   Peace is created among communities by people who work everyday to ensure that no violence takes place, and that disputes are sorted out.   Women have been playing central roles in the process of making peace, but their role is largely ignored in official peacebuilding processes.   Speaking to IPS Inter Press Service, Yemeni peacebuilding advisor and humanitarian leader Muna Luqman challenged conventional thinking about who builds peace and where peacebuilding truly begins, “Communities never wait until peace happens,” Luqman said. “They’re working to protect peace on a daily basis.”   Based on her extensive experience working in Yemen for more than 15 years, Luqman explained how local communities, especially women, resolve disputes, provide crucial services, negotiate humanitarian assistance and create dialogical spaces way ahead of any intervention of international organizations.   Luqman is the founder and chairperson of Food for Humanity, has seen first-hand the changes conflict brings about in society. While living through the Yemeni civil war, she faced airstrikes and negotiated the evacuation of civilians caught up in the war zone. These experiences led her to realize that humanitarian response alone is inadequate.   “If we only respond to the consequences of conflict without addressing its causes, we will always be a step behind,” she reflected. Her experience also exposed one of the greatest challenges facing local peacebuilders and that is of recognition.   “We thought we would be the first to be supported,” she said, referring to local organisations that led humanitarian responses before international actors arrived. “But we found out that it was a long process.”   According to a report by UN Women, around 676 million women lived within 50 kilometers of deadly conflict in 2024 – the highest figure since the 1990s.   Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, said, “Women and girls are being killed in record numbers, shut out of peace tables, and left unprotected as wars multiply. Women do not need more promises, they need power, protection, and equal participation.”   Data collected by the United Nations from 2020-2024 found that, “Women’s representation as negotiators, mediators and signatories in peace processes is far below the target set by the UN. In 2024, women made up only seven percent of negotiators on average worldwide, and nearly nine out of ten negotiation tracks included no women negotiators”.   The report stated, women were slightly more represented in mediation roles, averaging 14 percent but still, two-thirds of mediation efforts did not include women.   The discrepancy for Luqman pointed to an underlying problem in international peacebuilding. While local groups responded immediately to communities in need, other institutions were bound by mandates, funding, and procedures. It becomes evident, she says, why true inclusion in peacebuilding should be more than merely symbolic in nature.   True inclusion requires recognizing women not as mere recipients of help or observers of processes, but as active participants in negotiating, mediating, and taking crucial decisions.   It is proven that peace treaties are much more sustainable in those cases where women are actively involved in the negotiation process. Women broaden the agenda from purely political aspects like political power-sharing to such crucial areas as justice, education, health care, livelihoods, displacement, and community reconciliation.   Luqman believes that local women possess a unique understanding of these realities because they remain deeply embedded within their communities.   “Women mediators are willing to prevent disagreements before they become violence,” she explained. She has witnessed women in Yemen securing the release of prisoners, organizing their communities to rebuild schools and water supplies, and preventing children from joining armed groups. This is often done discreetly, outside the limelight of the international community.   “The strength of women peacebuilders is their ability to mobilize their communities,” she said. However, it is precisely these women who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. They are threatened, intimidated, forced to flee, and often lack funds despite helping others. Protecting women peacebuilders must be a priority on the global agenda, Luqman says.   “They do this work while they are facing either lack of funding or no funding at all. They remain resilient, they remain vulnerable at the same time, and they remain under threats.”   She believes that the international community needs to go beyond recognizing the contribution of women and work to provide financial support to women-led organizations that are trusted and credible within the local communities.   While serving as the United Nations National Coordinator on Inclusion in the Peace Process of Yemen, Luqman developed an approach that would allow local people to speak up.   The initiative did not consider participation just as a formal aspect but actually aimed to bring in the community perspective.   “It wasn’t symbolic participation,” she told me. “We really took that analysis and used it in our system.”   This is because peace processes cannot be made by the political elite only; they need to be inclusive of communities that have been experiencing conflict.   In Luqman’s opinion, local governance, climate challenges, livelihoods, transitional justice, and building trust are not marginal questions but rather central factors in avoiding further outbreaks of violence.   Luqman insists on the need for peacebuilding to involve listening: “Sometimes listening to the people themselves and giving them a space is in itself a peace process.”   In the context of rising complexity of conflicts, the importance of inclusion into peace processes has never been so urgent.   Women’s involvement in the processes cannot be considered as some kind of equality issue or simply as an obligation under international mechanisms.   On the contrary, it is strategically necessary based on experience and community trust. The message from Luqman to policymakers is obvious: local women peacebuilders are not marginal figures in peacebuilding but its cornerstone.   “The local women peacebuilders are the structure and the backbone of these societies,” Luqman said. “They are valuable. They should be treated as valuable assets. They should be supported and protected.”   Constructing sustainable peace is not possible only through negotiations of the parties involved in armed conflict but also through investing in people who have done so many years of keeping communities together despite the situation being unrecognizable.   http://www.ipsnews.net/2026/07/women-peacebuilders-the-missing-voices-at-the-negotiating-table/ http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/10/1166138 http://www.unocha.org/news/acting-un-deputy-relief-chief-tells-security-council-regional-tensions-could-deepen-yemens   Oct. 2025   In advance of the October 2025 UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), this open letter was sent to UN Member States on behalf of 661 civil society signatories from 106 countries working on issues related to gender equality and women’s rights, peace and security, human rights, humanitarian assistance, and protection of civilians. The letter calls on the Security Council and Member States to take decisive action to defend the fundamental tenets of the WPS agenda.   http://www.globalr2p.org/publications/2025-open-letter-to-the-un-in-advance-of-the-annual-open-debate-on-wps/ http://www.prio.org/research/topics/gender Visit the related web page
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