women's rights

An investigation into four countries where Mars, Mondelez and Nestle purchase cocoa has shown that many women farmers face discrimination, unequal pay and hunger, leaving the companies’ social policies exposed as weak and needing work.

Women played a key role in Yemen's 2011 popular uprising, but almost a year on they are still waiting for change.

Louise Hancock, Oxfam's Afghanistan policy officer, said:

“It’s been another conference of flowery speeches: big on rhetoric and short on substance.  

Famous women and men from throughout the world are backing the new Green Scarves for Solidarity campaign, which calls on world leaders to keep their promises to Afghan women 10 years since the start of military intervention in Afghanistan.

The improvements for Afghan women’s rights gained over the last decade are at risk of slipping away and could be lost in a quick fix bargain for peace, Oxfam warned today.

The new Afghan government must urgently devote greater resources to building up to 6,000 new schools, training upwards of 5,000 new midwives and professionalizing the police force, according to aid agencies working throughout Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s next government must urgently devote greater resources to building up to 6,000 new schools, training upwards of 5,000 new midwives and professionalizing the police force to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans, aid agencies working in Afghanistan said today.

Eight women from poor countries around the world, uniting as the “W8”, today demanded that G8 leaders take action to prevent the deaths of half a million women every year in childbirth.