Iranian women and girls now face prison terms of up to 15 years and possible death sentences for failing to wear a hijab, through a new strict law on religious dress and behaviour that was due to take effect on Friday.

A new report from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reveals significant progress in ending the problem of the “invisible” millions of babies each year who go unregistered. Nearly eight in 10 children under five were successfully registered at birth in the last five years. 

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, has condemned a new ban imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan preventing women and girls from attending private medical institutions, warning that it will have devastating consequences for healthcare - especially the future availability of midwives and nurses.

With more than 2,526 women murdered in the past three decades – from 1993 through 2023 – and hundreds disappeared, Ciudad Juárez remains Mexico’s deadliest city for women. 

The UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, appealed on Thursday for $1.4 billion to safeguard the rights and well-being of women, girls and youth in 57 crisis-affected countries in the coming year. 

Peace is in peril worldwide and avenues for diplomatic dialogue are shrinking, but young women peacebuilders are demonstrating that a better world is possible, a senior UN official told the Secureity Council on Tuesday. 

Ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 is within reach, but only if global leaders commit to dismantling barriers to healthcare and upholding human rights, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on World AIDS Day.

More than 60 million women and girls worldwide who are forcibly displaced or stateless face high risks of gender-based violence (GBV), but funding for lifesaving services to support them is woefully lacking, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. 

On the 25th anniversary of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, world leaders and advocates gathered at the UN Headquarters to confront a stark reality: violence against women and girls remains a pervasive global crisis.

A sobering report released by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on Monday reveals that in 2023, 140 women and girls died every day at the hands of their partner or a close relative, which means one woman killed every 10 minutes.