Almost every country in the world has agreed to targets to achieve gender equality by 2030 as part of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Yet a report today reveals that progress has been so dismal that more than 850 million women and girls are living in countries rated as “very poor” for gender equality.
These statistics probably mean very little to the women who are facing the brutal reality of these inequalities in their daily lives, which is why we try to tell their stories and give them a voice they might not otherwise have.
In Afghanistan, we reported on the Taliban’s latest “vice and virtue” law forbidding women from speaking in public or even singing in their homes, a chilling move labelled “a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future” by Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the UN mission in the country.
The violent erasure of women in Afghanistan and Iran has led human rights activists to call for “gender apartheid” to be made an international crime. Hillary Clinton picked up on the Guardian’s Afghan story on X, calling on the world “to speak out against this latest abomination”. For those of us who are lucky enough to be heard, it’s the least we can do.
Max Benato, deputy editor, Foundations and philanthropic projects
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