Category: MIL-OSI

Source: Amnesty International –

At the opening of its session, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) adopted its Agreed Conclusions on strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, following weeks of intense pressure from a small, but vocal group of states seeking to derail the negotiations and the adoption of the text.  

The Commission adopted the Agreed Conclusions through a vote after the United States blocked adoption by consensus. An overwhelming majority of states supported the final text, with 37 out of the 45 member states of the Commission voting in favor, 6 abstaining, and only the US voting against.

Civil society and grassroots movements played a decisive role in securing this outcome. Feminist organizations and activists closely monitored negotiations, coordinated advocacy across capitals, and mobilized governments for months.

“At a time of severe backlash on human rights and multilateralism, the adoption of Agreed Conclusions that safeguard long-standing gender equality standards is a powerful signal that global commitments still matter and that attempts to turn back the clock will not go unchallenged,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“From the frontlines of communities to the halls of the UN, feminist groups and women human rights defenders continue to resist the backlash against gender justice, while mobilizing states to ensure that hard-won gains are protected and vigorously defended.”

This is the first time in the history of CSW that an outcome isn’t adopted by consensus, demonstrating both the deepening polarization around multilateral negotiations and the determination of an overwhelming majority of states to protect long-standing gender justice norms.

From the frontlines of communities to the halls of the UN, feminist groups and women human rights defenders continue to resist the backlash against gender justice, while mobilizing states to ensure that hard-won gains are protected and vigorously defended.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General

Over a period of several weeks, UN member states engaged in negotiations on draft Agreed Conclusions focused on this year’s CSW priority theme: “Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls”.

During the negotiations, the US and several other states, including Argentina, Russia and Saudi Arabia, sought to water down or reopen language drawn verbatim from previous CSW agreements. A broad group of states pushed back, repeatedly reminding those delegations that reopening agreed language would undermine years of established commitments. Ultimately, the Chair of CSW and the co-facilitators tabled a text that made some concessions while safeguarding core elements of previously agreed language.

Even as the Commission convened to adopt the outcome, efforts to derail the process continued. In a last-minute procedural move, the US presented amendments, arguing that the text still included “controversial” and “ideological” issues. The amendments decisively failed, with only the US voting in support of them. At the same time, other states — including Egypt and Nigeria — repeatedly called for a delay to the vote to allow more time for negotiations, despite extensive consultations and efforts by the co-facilitators to produce a balanced text while respecting integrity of agreed language.

“While the loss of consensus is disappointing, a weakened text – or no outcome at all – would have sent an especially troubling signal to women and girls who continue to face barriers to access to justice, and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. In a climate marked by widespread impunity, Amnesty reiterates its calls on states to step up resistance to attacks on gender justice,” said Agnès Callamard.

Source: Amnesty International –

• Women and girls bear the brunt of collapsing healthcare and mass displacement
• Medical staff describe an exponential rise in maternal and neo-natal health conditions
• Women with cancer and life-threatening illnesses facing interrupted or inaccessible care
• Repeated closure of Rafah crossing further reducing already limited aid deliveries and medical evacuations

Over the past 29 months the devastating, multilayered impact of Israel’s ongoing genocide has pushed Palestinian women and girls in the occupied Gaza Strip to the brink, said Amnesty International today.

Amid Israel’s deliberate imposition of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinian women face compounded and life-threatening consequences that have materialized through ongoing mass displacement, the collapse of reproductive, maternal and newborn healthcare; interruption of treatment for chronic illness, including cancer; heightened exposure to disease and unsafe and undignified living conditions; as well as profound physical and mental harm.

Women in Gaza are being denied the conditions needed to live and to give life safely.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International

These harms are exacerbated by Israel’s ongoing restrictions on the entry into Gaza of items indispensable to the survival of the civilian population including adequate food, medicines, medical equipment and assistive devices, shelter material and equipment necessary for the purification of water and removal of rubble, unexploded ordnance and waste. Israel continues to impose these restrictions amid life-threatening delays on medical evacuations and the suspension of registration of international humanitarian organizations that provide essential services for women and girls.

Women have been forced to give birth without adequate medical care, to endure pregnancy and post-partum recovery while displaced in overcrowded and unsanitary sites, and to navigate hunger, disease, and trauma with little privacy, protection, or access to essential services often while caring for others.

“As tensions across the Middle East escalate sharply following Israeli-US attacks on Iran, we must not forget Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the brutal price women and girls have been paying. For pregnant women and those breastfeeding, for mothers of babies and young children, for women living with chronic illnesses and disabilities or recovering from life-changing injuries, for the widowed and the many women who have lost loved ones, for women who have been displaced multiple times, for women on their periods, for women who lost their jobs and access to education life has become a daily struggle to survive amid a relentless cascade of catastrophes,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“Women in Gaza are being denied the conditions needed to live and to give life safely. This systematic erosion of their rights to health, safety, dignity and a future is not an unfortunate by-product of war; it is a deliberate act of war targeting women and girls. It is also the foreseeable consequence of Israel’s calculated policies and practices of multiple mass displacement, deliberate restrictions on basic and essential items, as well as humanitarian relief, and two years of relentless bombardment that have devastated Gaza’s health system and decimated entire families.”

In its March 2025 report, the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel concluded that Israeli authorities systematically and deliberately destroyed the sexual and reproductive healthcare system in Gaza, amounting to two acts prohibited under the genocide Convention: deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

Between 5 and 24 February 2026, Amnesty International interviewed 41 women- all internally displaced- including, eight cancer patients, four pregnant women, and 14 women who gave birth after the so-called “ceasefire”. The organization also interviewed 26 healthcare workers across six healthcare facilities in Gaza City and Deir al-Balah, as well as four staff of international organizations.

The catastrophe in the Gaza Strip is multilayered and compounded by devastation upon devastation: ongoing displacement with ongoing air strikes, a devastated and under-resourced health system, and the complete collapse of the economy.  The Ministry of Health in Gaza recorded the killings of 630 Palestinians, including 202 children, 89 women and 339 men between the signing of the so-called ceasefire in October 2025 until the end of February, adding to the over 72,000 killed since 7 October 2023. While the immediate threat of famine has eased, hunger remains acute and malnutrition persists, with disastrous long-term negative consequences. With the mass destruction or severe damage to homes in Gaza and with nearly 60% of the total area of the Strip located east of the so-called “yellow line”, which is physically controlled by Israeli forces and Israel-backed local militias, most Palestinians in Gaza continue to be displaced and have lost access to the agricultural food-producing areas of Gaza.

On 27 February an Israeli Supreme Court temporarily froze the implementation of a government decision to suspend the operations of 37 de-registered international aid organizations operating in the OPT. However, restrictions and uncertainty over aid access persist with devastating effects on Palestinians especially Palestinian women in Gaza.

 On 28 February Israel closed all three operational crossings into the Gaza Strip after launching a joint attack on Iran with the United States. The closure halted the already limited flow of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies as well as medical evacuations out of the Gaza Strip. On 3 March, Israel reopened the Kerem Shalom/Karm Abu Salem crossing for the “gradual entry of humanitarian aid.” The Rafah crossing with Egypt, which was only partially reopened in early February, remains closed. This whilst Israeli military operations such as shelling, militarized demolitions and airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have continued since the ceasefire agreement, inflicting further human suffering and damage to civilian infrastructure.

Source: Amnesty International –

Across the world, governments and other actors are rolling back on decades of progress on gender equality, including access to abortion. But people are fighting back, determined to protect the rights so many have fought so hard to achieve.    

As the Commission on the Status of Women holds its 70th session, three courageous human rights defenders from Burkina Faso, Poland and the United States share their strategies to protect access to abortion, their hopes for the future and the reasons why they believe that, despite the many increasing challenges, humanity must always win. 

Source: Amnesty International –

Five months on from opposition protests banned by the authorities that saw hundreds of people arrested, including pregnant women, some are still being held even though they had no involvement in the protests, while others have been convicted in unfair trials, Amnesty International said today.

In October 2025, a few days before the presidential election, hundreds of people, including protesters and passersby, were arrested during the crackdown on protests. Several of them have been convicted in unfair trials in which they were denied a lawyer. Dozens of others, including a pregnant woman, remain in pretrial detention, according to lawyers. 

“Today, five months after their arrest, people are still being held solely because they happened to be in the vicinity of the protests. The Ivorian authorities must order their release,” said Marceau Sivieude, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa.

“According to our information, several of the prisoners detained since October 2025 have not been allowed to see family members or lawyers, and are not receiving adequate medical care. We are very concerned about the situation of three women who, despite being in the advanced stages of pregnancy, are being held at the Abidjan prison complex.”

These women were caught up in raids while going about their daily business.

Lawyer Sylvain Tapi

Source: Amnesty International –

Prior to the upcoming session of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, and which from 10 to 12 March will assess the progress and challenges faced by Ecuador in preventing, investigating and punishing enforced disappearances, Amnesty International has stated that these crimes remain unpunished and will continue to happen as long as President Daniel Noboa’s security policy remains militarized.

“This is a crucial opportunity to inform the international community that the armed forces have committed enforced disappearances under the Noboa administration, and that the victims’ families continue to demand truth, justice and reparation. Now more than ever, we must heed their demands,” said Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International.

This is a crucial opportunity to inform the international community that the armed forces have committed enforced disappearances under the Noboa administration, and that the victims’ families continue to demand truth, justice and reparation.”

Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International. 

The organization submitted information to the Committee based on its report “It was the military, I saw them: Enforced disappearances in Ecuador at the hands of the armed forces”, which documents the disappearance of ten people in five security operations carried out in 2024 in the context of the militarized security strategy driven by President Noboa.

Source: Greenpeace Statement –

Kingston, Jamaica (March 9, 2026)—As governments gather this week for the latest Council session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), evidence submitted by Greenpeace International raises questions about whether The Metals Company (TMC), its subsidiaries, and subcontractors may have breached the regulator’s exploration contracts. The developments come as governments continue negotiating rules that would govern commercial mining of the international seabed, while industry pressure to begin extraction grows. 

Greenpeace International is urging member states to investigate the allegations and take firm and swift action if breaches are confirmed. 

Arlo Hemphill, Greenpeace USA Oceans Are Life Campaign Lead, said: “If the ISA’s rules mean anything, member states must ensure they are enforced. Deep sea mining threatens one of the planet’s most important and fragile ecosystems with large-scale and irreversible destruction. Governments should be strengthening ocean protections, not opening the door to a free-for-all on a system already under pressure or giving companies with unresolved compliance questions a greenlight to mine.” 

The ISA opened an inquiry at its last Council meeting in July 2025 after TMC USA sought unilateral deep sea mining licences from the Trump administration under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMRA), raising concerns about efforts to pursue mining in international waters outside the ISA framework. TMC USA has also recently filed the first consolidated deep sea mining application under a newly streamlined U.S. permitting process created under the same law. 

Many legal scholars argue that such U.S. actions would conflict with international law and could place companies that take this approach in breach of existing exploration licenses issued by the regulator, which operates under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Under the treaty, seabed minerals in international waters are considered the “common heritage of humankind.”

Evidence submitted by Greenpeace International to the ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho, in support of the body’s ongoing inquiry into deep sea mining contractors, focuses on TMC’s subsidiaries—Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI) and Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd. (TOML)—as well as Blue Minerals Jamaica (BMJ), a company linked to Dutch-Swiss offshore engineering firm Allseas, one of TMC’s subcontractors and largest shareholders. The submission argues that the cohort’s activities, taken together, may violate core contractual obligations under UNCLOS. 

Greenpeace International has urged the ISA to consider taking action, including not renewing the exploration contracts of NORI and TOML, which expire in July 2026 and January 2027, respectively, if these claimed breaches are confirmed.

Louisa Casson, Campaigner, Greenpeace International, said: “In July, governments at the ISA sent a clear message: rogue companies trying to sidestep international law will face consequences. Turning that promise into action at this meeting is far more important than rushing through a mining code designed to appease corporate interests rather than protect the common good. As delegations from around the world gather today, they must unite and confront the U.S. and TMC’s neo-colonial resource grab and make clear that deep sea mining is a reckless gamble humanity cannot afford.”

The Greenpeace International analysis found that: 

• Following TMC USA’s application to mine the international seabed unilaterally, NORI and TOML have amended their agreements to provide payments to Nauru and Tonga, respectively, if U.S.-authorized commercial mining goes ahead. This sets up their participation in a financial mechanism predicated on mining in contradiction to UNCLOS.
• NORI and TOML have signed intercompany intellectual property and data-sharing agreements with TMC USA, and the data obtained by NORI and TOML under the ISA exploration contracts has been key to facilitating TMC USA’s application under U.S. national regulations.
• Just a few individuals hold key decision-making roles across TMC and all relevant subsidiaries, making claims of independent management ungrounded. “NORI, TOML, and TMC USA, while legally distinct, are managed as an integrated corporate group with a single, coordinated strategy under the direct control and strategic direction of their parent company [TMC].” (analysis, p. 2)

Letícia Carvalho has recently publicly advocated for governments to finalize a streamlined deep sea mining code this year and has expressed her own concerns with the calls from 40 governments for a moratorium. At a time when rogue actors are attempting to bypass or weaken the international system, Greenpeace believes that establishing rules and regulations that will allow mining to start is falling into the trap of international bullies. A mining code would legitimize and drive investment into a flagging industry, supporting rogue actor companies like TMC and weakening deterrence against unilateral mining outside the ISA framework.

Casson added: “Rushing to finalize a mining code serves the interests of multinational corporations, not the principles of multilateralism. With what we know now, rules to mine the deep sea cannot coexist with ocean protection. Governments are legally obliged to only authorize deep sea mining if it can demonstrably benefit humanity—and that is non-negotiable. As the long list of scientific, environmental, and social concerns with this industry keeps growing, what is needed is a clear political signal that the world will not be intimidated into rushing a mining code by unilateral threats and will instead keep moving towards a moratorium on deep sea mining.” 

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Photos are available in the Greenpeace Media Library 

Contacts:

Tanya Brooks, Senior Communications Specialist at Greenpeace USA, [email protected]   

Greenpeace USA Press Desk: [email protected]   

Sol Gosetti, Media Coordinator for the Stop Deep Sea Mining campaign, Greenpeace International: [email protected], +34 633 029 407

Source: Greenpeace Statement –

Nairobi woke up on Saturday to streets turned to rivers, homes submerged, and families torn apart. At least 42 people have lost their lives, fathers, mothers, children, swept away in a single night of rain. Greenpeace Africa grieves with every family carrying that loss today. We stand with the people of Mukuru, Kibra, Mathare, Huruma, and Embakasi, communities that had already endured so much, and that deserved so much more protection than they received.

For years, communities, scientists and climate advocates across Kenya have raised the alarm that the climate crisis was not a future threat but a present reality, already reshaping weather patterns, already threatening lives. Those warnings were not heeded with the urgency they deserved. The devastating scenes across Nairobi last week are a heartbreaking reminder of what is at stake when we fail to act in time.

What Kenya is living through right now is not an isolated catastrophe. While Nairobi drowns, communities in North Eastern Kenya are facing prolonged drought that has decimated livelihoods, dried up water sources, and pushed families to the edge. Flood and drought. Deluge and dryness. These are not opposites. They are two faces of the same broken climate system, and Kenya is bearing both at once.

Scientists have confirmed that the climate crisis made the extreme rainfall behind floods approximately 40% more intense. These are not acts of God. They are the consequences of decades of unchecked emissions by the world’s wealthiest nations and corporations, consequences being paid, in lives, by communities who contributed almost nothing to this crisis.

This crisis has also laid bare a painful and urgent truth: Kenya is actively dismantling the natural systems that protect its people. Forests are not scenery. They are infrastructure. They absorb rainfall, anchor soil, regulate rivers, and shield downstream communities from exactly the kind of flooding that devastated Nairobi this week. When we destroy them, we don’t just lose trees. We strip away the first line of defence that stands between a heavy rainstorm and a catastrophe.

Kenya’s forests, from the urban green lungs like Karura in the heart of Nairobi to the highland water towers of the Mau Complex and the Aberdares, are the country’s natural flood defence. They absorb rainfall, regulate rivers and protect communities downstream. Yet they continue to face encroachment, illegal logging and weak enforcement. Every hectare lost is another community left more exposed and we are losing far too many.

But forests alone are not enough. Kenya has known for years that its cities, and particularly Nairobi’s informal settlements, are acutely vulnerable to flooding. The warnings have come from meteorologists, from engineers, from community leaders, from civil society. Yet drainage systems remain clogged and inadequate, early warning systems fail to reach the last mile, and residents in Mukuru, Mathare and Kibera have had to face rising waters with no meaningful preparation or support. That is not bad luck. That is a governance failure, one that costs lives every single rainy season, and that becomes more deadly with every degree of warming.

Disaster preparedness is not a luxury. It is a basic obligation of the government to its people. Kenya must invest urgently in climate-resilient urban infrastructure, functional early warning systems that reach every neighbourhood, and community-level emergency response capacity. Accountability must follow. When communities raise the alarm about blocked drainage, about encroachment on the forests that protect them, about the absence of emergency plans, those warnings must be acted on, not filed away until the next flood makes the front page.

Kenya’s government must urgently invest in climate resilience infrastructure: early warning systems that reach the last mile, drainage systems that can withstand intensifying rainfall, and social protection systems that catch communities when the rains don’t stop or when they don’t come at all.

Greenpeace Africa calls on the Kenyan government to:

• Protect Kenya’s forests, from the highland water towers of the Mau Complex, Aberdares and Cherangany Hills to urban forests like Karura, by reinstating full legal protections, halting all encroachment, and enforcing the law without exception.
• Invest in community-level early warning and climate preparedness systems, particularly for informal settlements.
• Champion Kenya’s rightful claim to Loss and Damage finance at the international level and demand that rich polluting nations pay their climate debt.

The people of Kenya deserve more than condolences. They deserve justice.

— ENDS —

For media inquiries:

Sherie Gakii, Communications and Storytelling Manager, Greenpeace Africa, [email protected]  |  +254702776749