António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, reminded the United Nations General Assembly that a woman is killed worldwide every ten minutes by her partner or a family member. This message was shared on the occasion of International Women's Day, commemorated this Friday at the institutional level.
Guterres highlighted that alongside centuries of discrimination, women face new digital threats, where online discourse often contributes to silencing their voices, worsening gender biases, and increasing harassment. The Secretary-General warned how online violence can escalate to real-life violence, turning women's bodies into political battlegrounds.
The Secretary-General emphasized that the UN and the European Union have implemented global approaches that have yielded tangible results, such as removing 21 million women and girls from the cycle of gender-based violence, doubling convictions for these crimes, and stabilizing the education of a million girls, preventing them from dropping out of school. Guterres underscored the importance of continuing to work with an ambitious strategy to ensure that girls and women do not live in fear and that their safety is a non-negotiable right.
The Secretary-General reported that the UN has achieved gender parity at all levels, but did not address the growing debate regarding the possibility of electing a woman as Secretary-General for the first time when his term ends in December 2026.
