The war affects more than 600 million women and girls, the UN says

UNITED NATIONS — More than 600 million women and girls are now affected by the wara 50 percent increase from a decade ago and fear the world has forgotten them amid a growing 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, decades of progress for women are slipping away and “generational gains in women’s rights are hanging in the balance in the whole world”.

The UN chief was assessing the status of a Security Council resolution passed on October 31, 2000, which called for equal participation of 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 undermined – with power and decision-making on peace and security matters largely in the hands of men.

“As long as oppressive patriarchal social structures and gender biases hold back half of our societies, peace will remain elusive,” he warned.

The report says the proportion of women killed in armed conflict doubled in 2023 from a year earlier; Cases of sexual violence verified by the UN were 50% higher; and the number of girls affected by serious violations in conflicts increased by 35%.

At a two-day UN Security Council meeting on the issue that ended on Friday, Sima Bahous, head of the UN gender agency known as UN Women, also highlighted the lack of attention women’s voices in search of peace.

She cited the fears of millions uneducated Afghan women and girls and a future; of displacement the women of Gaza “waiting for death”; of Sudanese women who are victims of sexual violence; and the fading hopes of women in Myanmar, Haiti, Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere.

Bahous said the 612 million women and girls who are affected by the war “wonder whether the world has already forgotten them, whether they have fallen off the agenda of an international community overwhelmed by crises of ever-deepening frequency, severity and urgency.”

The world must respond to its fears with hope, she said, but the reality is grim: “One in two women and girls in conflict-affected settings face moderate to severe food insecurity, 61 percent of all maternal mortality is concentrated in 35 conflicts. – affected countries.”

As for women’s participation in decision-making and politics in countries in conflict, Bahous said it is blocked.

“The percentage of women in peace negotiations has not improved over the past decade: below 10% on average in all processes and below 20% in processes led or supported by the United Nations,” she said.

UN Under-Secretary-General Amina Mohammed announced the launch of a “Joint Commitment on Women’s Participation in Peace Processes” and urged governments, regional organizations and others involved in mediation to join the UN in taking concrete action to that end. Commitments include appointing women as lead mediators and team members, promoting women’s direct and meaningful participation in peace processes, consulting women leaders at all stages and integrating women with expertise “to promote gender-sensitive peace processes and agreements”, a 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 have seen how the lack of political will continues to stand in the way of the full implementation of the commitments assumed by the member states,” Panama’s ambassador to the UN, Eloy Alfaro de Alba, said on Friday.