News stories by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

NEW YORK, Sep 07 (IPS) - Twenty-five years ago, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing set a path-breaking agenda for women's rights. As a result of the two-week gathering with more than 30,000 activists, representatives from 189 nations unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 03 (IPS) - International Women's Day, March 8 2020 - Twenty-five years ago, thousands of representatives adopted the Beijing Declaration, one of the most progressive universal agreement to advance women's rights.

BANGKOK, Thailand – UNITED NATIONS, Nov 27 (IPS) - Great strides have been taken to empower women and girls in the Asia-Pacific region since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing adopted an ambitious global agenda to achieve gender equality twenty-five years ago. Gender parity has been achieved in primary education. Maternal mortality has been halved. Today, the region's governments are committed to overcoming the persistent challenges of discrimination, gender-based violence and women's unequal access to resources and decision-making.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 (IPS) - Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is Executive Director UN Women If I could have one wish granted, it might well be a total end to rape. That means a significant weapon of war gone from the arsenal of conflict, the absence of a daily risk assessment for girls and women in public and private spaces, the removal of a violent assertion of power, and a far-reaching shift for our societies.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 (IPS) - Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women & Michael Kaufman is Co-founder, White Ribbon Campaign and Senior Fellow, Promundo institute For most people, the annual G7 meeting may just seem like an expensive photo-op that doesn't connect with any concrete change in people's lives. But for us, appointed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to sit on his G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council, it was a unique opportunity to push for strong commitments for girls' and women's rights.

NEW YORK, Nov 22 (IPS) - The initial response to the outpouring of ‘#MeToo' around the world has been of outrage at the scale of sexual abuse and violence revealed. The millions of people joining the hashtag tide showed us how little they were heard before. They poured through the floodgate, opening up conversations, naming names and bolstering the frailty of individual statements with the robustness of a movement.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 (IPS) - The pain and anger of more than a million people who tweeted #MeToo in the last week have crowded social media with personal stories of sexual harassment or assault.

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 (IPS) - Later this month, the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) will take place in Mexico. This meeting provides an important opportunity to reboot global progress on embedding gender equality in disaster risk management and redress deadly exclusion.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10 (IPS) - What makes a young girl believe she is less intelligent and capable than a boy? And what happens when those children face the ‘hard' subjects like science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)? A recent study, ‘Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children's interests' showed that by the age of 6, girls were already less likely than boys to describe their own gender as ‘brilliant', and less likely to join an activity labelled for ‘very, very smart' kids.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 01 (IPS) - The drugging, abduction and violent gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil calls us all to turn the tide of sexual violence against women and girls in Brazil and in every country in the world.