“A few beatings won’t kill you.” This pronouncement, delivered by a judge to a woman trying to divorce her abusive husband, emerged last week from Afghanistan.
Under the Taliban’s gender apartheid there is no justice for women. Instead they are sent back to violent husbands. The barbarity of a criminal code that allows men to beat their wives is so extreme it’s tempting to see it in isolation. But the more I research the global pushback against women’s rights, the more I see how these abominations exist on a spectrum of violence.
While the Taliban is at the extreme end of that spectrum, it is not alone in wanting to keep women at home. The Heritage Foundation – architect of Project 2025 – has published a report, Saving America by Saving the Family, outlining how to “end America’s family crisis” – where alongside a raft of pro-natalist economic policies, it recommends a deeply patriarchal model that will encourage women have more babies earlier in life, and discourage further education and careers.
When you consider how heavily Project 2025 has influenced Trump’s second term this new report is horrifying: a projection of a country that strips women of their agency and returns them to the domestic realm where they can “save America” by reproducing. It is even more horrifying when you consider that there are politicians globally who admire the Heritage Foundation’s vision.
It is because of this toxic anti-women environment that a UN proposal to merge two of its agencies has caused such alarm among feminist groups and rights advocates. Hundreds of organisations have warned that bringing UN Women and UNFPA together into one super-agency will not only lead to a reduction in overall funding for gender equality programmes, it will also give the US and other countries that are hostile to women’s rights an opportunity to further undermine the global structures that support gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights.
One of the people I spoke to ahead of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which ends tomorrow, said a merger at this critical point “feels like a tactical assault”.
Last week UN secretary general António Guterres told CSW: “We still live in a male-dominated world and a male-dominated culture.” There are some well-funded players out there trying to make sure that remains the case. Which is why we will be watching what unfolds at the UN – and what that means for women around the world – very closely.
Isabel Choat, commissioning editor, Global development
The world in brief
Human rights | AI-powered mass-surveillance systems across Africa are violating citizens’ right to privacy, human rights experts have warned. Countries across the continent have spent more than $2bn on Chinese tracking technology that is not ‘necessary or proportionate’, the report says.
Women in prison | A ‘groundbreaking’ agreement on justice for women adopted by the UN last week will include those in prison for the first time. Campaigners hope the move will bring change, as the number of incarcerated women globally approaches one million
Global health | Weight-loss jabs such as Wegovy could be made for just $3 a month, according to new analysis, potentially making the treatment available to millions in poorer countries as patents expire.
Reproductive rights | A landmark ruling by the highest human rights court in Latin America has found Peru responsible for the death of a mother in its forced sterilisation programme. Celia Ramos was one of 310,000 mostly Indigenous women who were targeted in the brutal 1990s campaign.
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In Chasing Freedom, Oxford University professor and Zimbabwean Briton Simukai Chigudu writes about the history of the two countries and his own family, exploring how being “born free” after the end of colonial rule, but steeped in British traditions as a child, shaped his identity – and that of a generation of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. The Guardian described it as “an elegant exploration of how political liberation does not always bring freedom for oneself”.
