War affects over 600 million women and girls, UN says

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War affects over 600 million women and girls, UN says

2024-10-26 08:45 Last Updated At：08:50

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 600 million women and girls are now affected by war, a 50% increase from a decade ago, and they fear the world has forgotten them amid an escalating backlash against women’s rights and gender equality, top U.N. officials say.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a new report that amid record levels of armed conflict and violence, progress over the decades for women is vanishing and “generational gains in women’s rights hang in the balance around the world.”

The U.N. chief was assessing the state of a Security Council resolution adopted on Oct. 31, 2000, that demanded equal participation for women in peace negotiations, a goal that remains as distant as gender equality.

Guterres said current data and findings show that “the transformative potential of women’s leadership and inclusion in the pursuit of peace” is being undercut — with power and decision-making on peace and security matters overwhelmingly in the hands of men.

“As long as oppressive patriarchal social structures and gender biases hold back half our societies, peace will remain elusive,” he warned.

The report says the proportion of women killed in armed conflicts doubled in 2023 compared with a year earlier; U.N.-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence were 50% higher; and the number of girls affected by grave violations in conflicts increased by 35%.

At a two-day U.N. Security Council meeting on the topic that ended Friday, Sima Bahous, head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality known as UN Women, also pointed to a lack of attention to women’s voices in the search for peace.

She cited the fears of millions of women and girls in Afghanistan deprived of an education and a future; of displaced women in Gaza “waiting for death”; of women in Sudan who are victims of sexual violence; and of the vanishing hopes of women in Myanmar, Haiti, Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere.

Bahous said 612 million women and girls who are affected by war “wonder if the world has already forgotten them, if they have fallen from the agenda of an international community overwhelmed by crises of ever deeper frequency, severity and urgency.”

The world needs to answer their fears with hope, she said, but the reality is grim: “One in two women and girls in conflict-affected settings are facing moderate to severe food insecurity, 61% of all maternal mortality is concentrated in 35 conflict-affected countries.”

As for women’s participation in decision-making and politics in countries in conflict, Bahous said it’s stalled.

“The percentage of women in peace negotiations has not improved over the last decade: under 10% on average in all processes, and under 20% in processes led or supported by the United Nations,” she said.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed announced the launch of a “Common Pledge on Women’s Participation in Peace Processes,” and urged governments, regional organizations and others involved in mediation to join the U.N. in taking concrete steps toward that end. The commitments include appointing women as lead mediators and team members, promoting direct and meaningful participation of women in peace processes, consulting women leaders at all stages and embedding women with expertise “to foster gender-responsive peace processes and agreements,” she said.

Many U.N. ambassadors who spoke at the council meeting focused on the lack of “political will” to promote women in the peace process.

“We’ve seen how the lack of political will continues to stand in the way of the full implementation of the commitments entered into by member states,” Panama’s U.N. Ambassador Eloy Alfaro de Alba said Friday.

Israel launches strikes on military targets in Iran, escalating Mideast wars

2024-10-26 08:37 Last Updated At：08:40

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel launched airstrikes early Saturday on what it described as military targets in Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile assault Oct. 1, officials said. There was no immediate information on damage in the Islamic Republic.

The attack, threatened for weeks by Israel, comes as the Middle East sits on the precipice of a regional war more than a year after an initial attack by the militant group Hamas on Israel. In the time since, Israel has launched a devastating ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and an invasion of neighboring Lebanon, targeting militants long armed and aided by Tehran.

Israel's military described the attack Saturday as “precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” without immediately elaborating.

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since Oct. 7 ... including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a prerecorded video statement. “Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.”

In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the sound of explosions could be heard, with state-run media there initially acknowledging the blasts and saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city.

A Tehran resident told The Associated Press that at least seven explosions could be heard, which rattled the surrounding area. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

International flights began diverting around western Iran as news of the strikes broke, flight-tracking data showed.

Meanwhile, state media in Syria described its air defenses as targeting “hostile targets” there as well.

Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That initial attack killed some 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage back to the seaside enclave.

In the time since, more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to local health officials who don't delineate between civilians and combatants. The U.N. has said hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped with little food or supplies as Israeli forces close in on the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, while food and other aid remains scarce in the enclave. Israeli military operations in the West Bank in the time since have killed hundreds more.

Israel also has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon and a series of punishing airstrikes that have rattled that country.

The strike Saturday happened just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the U.S. after a tour of the Middle East where he and other U.S. officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region and exclude nuclear sites in Iran.

White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement that “we understand that Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran” and referred reporters to the Israeli government for more details on their operation.

Two U.S. officials said the U.S. was notified by Israel in advance of the strikes. They said there was no U.S. involvement in the operation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation.

Israel had vowed to hit Iran hard following a massive Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1. Iran said its barrage was in response to deadly Israeli attacks against its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and it has promised to respond to any retaliatory strikes.

Israel and Iran have been bitter foes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat, citing its leaders’ calls for Israel’s destruction, their support for anti-Israel militant groups and the country’s nuclear program.

Israel and Iran have been locked in a yearslong shadow war. A suspected Israeli assassination campaign has killed top Iranian nuclear scientists. Iranian nuclear installations have been hacked or sabotaged, all in mysterious attacks blamed on Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping in the Middle East in recent years, which later grew into the attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on shipping through the Red Sea corridor.

But since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the battle has increasingly moved into the open. Israel has recently turned its attention to Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began. Throughout the year, a number of top Iranian military figures have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon.

Iran fired a wave of missiles and drones at Israel last April after two Iranian generals were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Syria on an Iranian diplomatic post. The missiles and drones caused minimum damage, and Israel — under pressure from Western countries to show restraint — responded with a limited strike.

But after Iran’s early October missile strike, Israel promised a tougher response.

Meanwhile Friday, Israeli strikes on residential areas in southern Gaza killed 38 people, including 13 children from the same extended family, Palestinian health officials said.

In northern Gaza, health officials reported that Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in the area. Israel has renewed its offensive against Hamas in the north in recent weeks, and aid groups are sounding the alarm over dire humanitarian conditions.

In Lebanon, Israeli strikes on the country’s southeast killed three journalists working for news outlets that are considered to be aligned with Hezbollah.

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Lolita C. Baldor, Farnoush Amiri and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.