“I can tell you, perseverance pays,” says Bernadette Gomina, who ran unsuccessfully for the legislature in 2005 and 2010. She was elected in 2015 and reelected in 2020. “[Women parliamentarians] face issues at many levels: [lack of] finances, discriminatory behaviours and mindsets, but us women … we have our part to play; we must change our mindsets and get to work, together, to change this situation.”
You never know what crisis might strike, something that calls on the UN to act big and fast. If the world didn’t understand this before COVID-19, it does now. But an emergency can strike at any level.
By the end of 2020, COVID-19 had killed nearly 2 million people and left many millions more with lasting injury. It also led to larger crises in health, jobs, education, domestic violence, migration, and more. That’s a lot of fires to put out. But the United Nations is built to deal with many challenges at once.
In recognition of the 16 Days, we applaud the efforts of UN country teams across the globe as they aid in the fight against all forms of gender-based violence. This collection of stories showcases some of the team’s work to protect the health, safety and security of women and girls worldwide.
Sometimes, the crisis in West Africa and the Sahel region is so difficult and so complicated as to seem virtually unsolvable. But where many people see only a mission impossible, the United Nations sees an opportunity.
For many years in Nigeria, farmers and cattle herders have been in conflict over land rights. But the disputes have reached crisis levels in recent years, killing thousands of people and displacing many thousands more from their homes, left in ruins by attacks. More people have been killed in such disputes than by the Boko Haram insurgency. One of the main culprits? Climate change.
