Today, on International Women’s Day we celebrate the tremendous achievements of women across the globe, and the courageous actions to defeat the forces that threaten our progress.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban is waging a systematic campaign to deny the rights of women and girls to employment, education and access to civic life.
In Iran, more than 1,000 school girls have been subject to suspected poisoning attacks, in what many students and parents believe is part of an organized effort to close schools at the center of anti-government protest.
And in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June sharply curtailed reproductive choice.
Yet despite these assaults on basic human rights, women across the globe are audaciously challenging authorities, and refusing to allow these efforts to succeed.
Today women in Iran and Afghanistan are joining international lawyers and activists to lead a global campaign to end the systematic war on women. They are calling on nations to classify the treatment of women and girls in both countries as a “gender apartheid.”
In Ukraine, some 50,000 women have courageously taken up arms against the Russian invasion, with 5,000 on the frontlines, literally putting their lives on the line to fight against an invading army that has cruelly practiced acts of rape and sexual violence.
And in the United States, women exercised their power at the ballot box in the recent midterm elections to defy those who have organized the systematic roll back of their reproductive rights.
Today we, stand in solidarity and support with the women and girls across the globe who are refusing to back down from authorities who treat them as second-class citizens, and who are relentlessly fighting and advocating for their most basic human rights.