A joint post by Dr Julieta Marotta & Abigail Daley “Because women have an incredible amount of power that should not be ignored when it comes to building a sustainable future.” International Women’s Day gives us a yearly moment to reflect on gender equality and remind ourselves of our progress and the progress we still need to make. The Master of Science programme in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP), with the support of UNU-MERIT, emphasises its commitment to gender equality by taki...
Do you know gender? I thought I did. I knew what it basically meant: man and woman, boy and girl, lion and lioness etc. And I had helped women and girls all my student and professional life as a social activist and was confident that I knew what had to be known. So I felt safe. That was until as a UN staffer, I was asked to take its ‘I know gender’ course. Here, the bitter truth of what I teach my own students drove its stake through my time. Availability, we teach students of the economics of i...
Anniversaries always present an opportunity to look back. But today, as we commemorate the establishment of the United Nations on 24 October 1945, we must not focus solely on past lessons and progress. We must also consider the potential of a UN that is being revitalised to respond to a world vastly different than it was 72 years ago. The world now faces myriad problems, from climate change, conflict, and terrorism to migration, rapid urbanisation, and growing inequality. The current pace of glo...
When the so-called refugee crisis reached a peak in 2015, the German Development Agency (GIZ) started a new line of investigation: checking the links between corruption, migration and forced displacement. The investigations have a clear gender angle, reflecting the depths of suffering faced by migrant women and girls. On behalf of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Anticorruption and Integrity Programme of GIZ convened a session on ‘Corruption and Migration: ...