Women March As Rights Under Threat Across The Globe

Madrid, March 8 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Mar, 2023 ) :Women were beginning to hit the streets en masse across the globe on Wednesday to defend rights that are coming under increasing attack.

To mark International Women's Day, capitals across the world are hosting marches, rallies and demonstrations, including Madrid, where broad tree-lined boulevards are regularly packed with a sea of purple, a colour often associated with women's rights.

Marches took place on Wednesday in Thailand and Indonesia, where a few dozen women gathered in front of the country's parliament to urge lawmakers to pass a long-awaited bill to protect domestic workers and some chanted "long live Indonesian women".

Global progress on women's rights is "vanishing before our eyes," UN chief Antonio Guterres warned on Monday, saying gender equality would take another three centuries to achieve.

"Women's rights are being abused, threatened, and violated around the world," he added, pointing to Afghanistan, where "women and girls have been erased from public life".

Afghan universities reopened on Monday after a winter break, but only men returned to classes with the Taliban authorities' ban on women in higher education still in force some 18 months after they seized power.

On the eve of International Women's Day, the European Union imposed sanctions on individuals and entities deemed to be responsible for violence and rights abuses against women.

The Taliban's higher education minister Neda Mohammad Nadeem was sanctioned for depriving women from university learning.

The sanctions also targeted officials from five other countries -- Iran, Russia, South Sudan, Myanmar and Syria.