UN Women

10 August 2026

Inside Liberia’s campaign to end female genital mutilation (FGM)

This UN Women feature describes the "Born Perfect Bus Tour," a community-driven initiative traveling through Bong County and other regions in Liberia to end female genital mutilation (FGM) through open dialogue, survivor testimonials, and engagement with traditional leaders. Backed by UN Women the Embassy of Ireland, the tour reached over 3,000 people and found that FGM is sustained mainly by culture, tradition, and social pressures rather than religion. It also examines traditional institutions where FGM has often been embedded as part of rites of passage, with calls to redirect youth toward trade schools instead. 

UNESCO

13 August 2026

UNESCO Champions Rights-Based AI to Advance Gender Equality in Africa's Judiciaries

This UNESCO news piece (13 August 2026) covers the Second High-Level Meeting of Women Judicial Leaders of Africa, held in Johannesburg in April 2026 under the theme "The Maputo Protocol @20," which brought together over 300 senior African judicial leaders. UNESCO, as a knowledge partner, contributed a session on AI, digital rights, and women's rights, warning that AI in courts can improve access to justice but also risks reinforcing bias and enabling technology-facilitated violence against women if deployed without safeguards. 

New York Times

20 August 2026

Trans Migrants in ICE Detention Are Losing Their Rights and Medical Care

This New York Times piece centers on Camila Toro de Paula, a 25-year-old transgender woman from Venezuela held for 11 months in a men's federal detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, who says she has faced assault, threats, extended solitary confinement, and denial of medical care while seeking asylum. The article reports that the federal government has halted specialized transgender care at a minimum of 10 detention centers nationwide, no longer consistently providing hormone therapy, and that an Obama-era policy establishing basic rights for transgender detainees was removed from the DHS website.

The Guardian

21 August 2026

The Taliban have built a system for enslaving women in Afghanistan

This is an opinion piece arguing that the Taliban has constructed a systematic form of enslavement of Afghan women rather than just imposing isolated restrictions. It details specific mechanisms like the scrapped minimum marriage age enabling child marriage/sale of daughters, legalized "corrective beating" for husbands, blocked access to divorce, and closed shelters, alongside consequences like women's suicide rates exceeding men's and women being denied treatment since male doctors can't treat them while female doctors disappear through emigration or the ban on girls' education.