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Motherhood on the brink: Pregnant women in Yemen under famine and violence
Yemen
“It was the morning of a normal working day before fighting escalated close to the hospital. I heard a mother screaming at the gate,” midwife Shrook Khalid Saeed told UNFPA this week at the Al Shaab Hospital in the…
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Sudan sees expanded life-saving reproductive health services, with women at the helm
Sudan
Farina*, 50, in Sudan’s Blue Nile State, cannot remember how long ago she developed an obstetric fistula, a devastating childbirth injury that causes chronic incontinence, infections and, often, ostracism from the…
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We must empower women and girls to claim their bodily autonomy, leaders affirm
“When I was 15, I was to be forcibly married off to a guy I had never met,” Rachana Sunar told a panel held as part of the 65th session of the Commission on the Status of women.
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Syria’s decade of conflict takes massive toll on women and girls
Syrian Arab Republic
This week, Syria marks a grim anniversary: 10 years since the start of the country’s grinding conflict.
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One year into the pandemic, UNFPA estimates 12 million women have seen contraceptive interruptions, leading to 1.4 million unintended pregnancies
Nepal
An estimated 12 million women have experienced disruptions in their family planning services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to 1.4 million unintended pregnancies, according to new estimates released today by…
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From child bride to midwife saving lives of Afghan mothers
Afghanistan
At 14, she was married. By her 15th birthday, she had borne her first child. But Amina Mansoory’s story does not end in the way all too common with early marriage and childbearing. “Although my father wed me off early,…
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A digital cry for help: Big data study in Asia-Pacific provides key signposts to violence against women amid COVID-19
A new analysis from the Asia-Pacific region reveals huge increases in online searches for help from intimate partner violence amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as rising levels of digital misogyny and harassment.…
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Women supporting women: Female bus conductors drive out violence in Bhutan
Bhutan
The pandemic has laid bare many painful truths, not least how tough and isolating the road is when we go through difficult times alone. We’ve seen how working in solidarity is the way to reach where we are heading…
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In Yemen’s man-made catastrophe, women and girls pay the heaviest price
Yemen
Yemen's health system hangs together by a thread. More than $100 million is urgently needed to meet the sexual and reproductive health and protection needs of women and girls.
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Safe spaces in Colombia offer respite to Venezuelan migrants
Colombia
Griseida, 28, left Venezuela when she couldn’t find a job to feed her five children. Thirty-five-year-old Marlyng, too, left when there was no work to be found, leaving behind two of three children until she could get…
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Amid conflict, displacement, pandemic, Syrian girls see a future in… robots
Syrian Arab Republic
Bana, 12, fled her hometown, the city of Aleppo, before the Syrian conflict engulfed her neighbourhood. It was the first of two times she and her family would have to flee violence before settling down here, in…
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A pandemic-born programme bolsters local health systems in Brazil
Brazil
The boat to Santa Cruz do Arari leaves Belém, the capital of Pará state in northern Brazil, at 6 a.m. every day. It is November – dry season – so the river is low, and the boat carrying the UNFPA team can only go as far…
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