TWN Info Service on UN Sustainable Development (Oct26/12)
29 October 2026
Third World Network

UN: Women & girls bear growing toll of armed conflict, warns report
Published in SUNS #10543 dated 28 October 2026

Penang, 27 Oct (Kanaga Raja) -- More than 37,000 civilians were killed across 20 armed conflicts in 2025, with women and girls accounting for one in four of these deaths, according to the United Nations Secretary-General's latest annual report on women, peace and security.

The report (S/2026/758), released on 26 October, also found that an estimated 756.1 million women and girls (about 18.8 per cent of the global female population) lived within 50 km of armed conflict in 2025, marking a 5.6 per cent increase from 2024, the highest number and share since the 1990s.

It said that almost 40 per cent of the estimated 426.4 million women and girls living in extreme poverty are in conflict-affected settings.

This alarming statistic comes in the context of rising militarization and military spending, according to the report.

It said that world military expenditure increased for the eleventh consecutive year, reaching almost $2.9 trillion in 2025, an increase of 2.9 per cent in real terms over 2024 and more than double compared with 2000 levels.

If current trends persist and stated pledges to military spending are disbursed, military expenditure could reach between $4.7 trillion and $6.6 trillion by 2035, it stressed.

Conversely, the report pointed to a historic decline in foreign aid. Bilateral aid to contexts with high and extreme fragility dropped for the fifth year in a row (see separate story).

In 2024, the latest year for which data is available, aid to the value of $21.7 billion supported gender equality, compared with $24.6 billion in 2023. Only $2.5 billion was dedicated to gender equality as a principal objective.

"More women and girls are trapped in wars than at any point in decades. Yet military spending keeps rising and development assistance keeps falling, even as investing in women's leadership, conflict prevention, and peace-building has never been more urgent", said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous.

According to the UN report, last year, hundreds of events took place across the world to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1325 (2000).

It said across every region, governments reaffirmed that women's participation and leadership are central to peace and security, and beyond commemorations around the actual anniversary, this reaffirmation was made at multiple intergovernmental summits throughout the year.

However, there is a vast distance between the commitments across an overwhelming majority of countries and the current state of international peace and security, it argued.

The report said that the women and peace and security agenda has influenced important elements of global and national policy, but that this progress has not been matched by the political will, resources and accountability required to confront militarization and transform unequal gender power relations in favour of sustainable peace.

In 2025, the number of conflicts worldwide hit a new record high, with the largest number of armed conflicts since 1945, and has doubled in the past 15 years. Global military spending is quickly approaching $3 trillion per year, it noted.

It said the harm inflicted on women and girls - from rising levels of sexual and gender-based violence to the high number killed by explosive weapons used in densely populated areas - demonstrates a pattern of attacks carried out with disregard for international law and common humanity. It also reflects a deeply concerning shift from the rule of law towards the rule of power.

The report said at this critical juncture, many governments continue to exclude women from decision-making and conflict resolution, turning away from one of the most proven pathways to sustainable peace.

"Rather than pursuing inclusive peace agreements that address the root causes of conflict, current efforts often focus narrowly on ceasefires that are frequently short-lived and usually exclude women and girls."

More importantly, the report said the contraction of foreign aid has constrained gender expertise and capacity across the United Nations system and resulted in an alarming funding crisis for women's organizations, which are the backbone of efforts to build peace and protect women and girls.

It said that these trends are compounded by contestation over long-established gender-related terminology and normative frameworks, reflecting not just semantic disagreements but a normative push-back that is eroding existing legal protections and commitments and opening the door to broader rollbacks on the rights of women and girls everywhere.

In some conflict-affected countries, State and non-State armed actors have made the spread of misogyny and the suppression of women's rights a defining feature of their conduct, and the persecution of women human rights defenders, peacebuilders, journalists and politicians a central part of their approach.

However, the report noted that in every region, women's movements and their organizations continue to resist these attempts and to demonstrate resilience and leadership to protect women's rights and safeguard hard-won gains.

PROGRESS & GAPS

Rising geopolitical tensions and democratic erosion are increasingly undermining the norms and institutions that protect women's civil and political rights and freedoms, said the report.

Coordinated online smear campaigns, misogynistic harassment and threats have been used in many countries to intimidate and deter women's participation in public and political life, with potentially fatal consequences, the report added.

It further said that misinformation and disinformation campaigns, amplified by artificial intelligence often with minimum oversight and accountability, are being used to foment gender-based violence, de-legitimize gender equality, discredit women leaders, undermine trust in democratic institutions and weaken support for inclusive peace and security processes.

In parallel, it said that attempts to remove agreed language on gender equality and women's participation from multilateral agreements, including in the mandates of peacekeeping and political missions, mark a regression from decision-making grounded in human rights.

"These trends are magnified in contemporary conflicts and peace negotiations. The past year has been marked by transactional closed-door negotiations with a focus on conflict management, rather than conflict resolution and addressing root causes."

This situation has limited women's access and ability to influence discussions and outcomes. Almost half of all peace agreements reached in 2025 were on pre-negotiation, process or ceasefire arrangements, said the report.

Although these have helped to place a temporary halt on, or to reduce, hostilities, in many settings, they have not held or translated into comprehensive approaches or outcomes that can chart a path towards long-term political transformation and lasting peace, it said, noting that in several contexts violence has continued or re-erupted.

The report said in 2025, only 19 per cent of peace agreements worldwide (10 out of 53 agreements) included at least one reference to women, girls, gender or sexual violence, a drop from the year before.

In line with the previous year, most of the references appeared in partial agreements from Colombia, elevating the global average of signatories to 18 per cent.

Most of the gender-specific references in 2025 pertained to women's participation - affirming its importance, but without specifying substantive measures, such as gender quotas.

None of the 13 ceasefire agreements that were reached in 2025 and tracked by peace data consortiums named conflict-related sexual violence or other gendered forms of insecurity as prohibited acts, said the report.

Despite a higher degree of internationalization of conflicts and a significant rise in processes producing peace agreements to address conflicts between States, gender-specific references remain absent from such agreements, it emphasized.

Additionally, while there is great variation across processes, available data for 2025 on women's representation as negotiators, mediators and signatories indicate that women continue to be locked out of key processes.

The report said that out of 57 processes reviewed with negotiations or negotiation attempts in 2025, women were represented among negotiating delegations in only 13 processes (23 per cent), and on average women made up 5 per cent of negotiators - a drop from 7 per cent last year.

It said that for mediators, the share stood at 14 per cent, the same as last year. Women mediators in 2025 were mostly found among observers and delegation members rather than leads, with some notable exceptions, such as in United Nations-led or co-led processes.

The report said that not only does this show little progress from earlier data sets, but the global shares remain far below the recommended minimum one-third target set by the United Nations for all processes, whether led by the United Nations or not, with the goal of reaching parity as recommended by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

The roles played by legislators and appointees to senior governmental positions at the national or local levels, including diplomatic posts, often serve as important pathways for formal and direct engagement in peace and recovery processes, the report noted, pointing out, however, that men overwhelmingly hold these positions.

For instance, the report said that the latest data show that women hold just 27 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide, and in conflict-affected countries, their representation falls to 20 per cent.

At the local level, women account for 36 per cent of elected members in deliberative bodies globally, while in conflict-affected countries with data, this share drops to only 11 per cent.

Similar to legislatures, women's representation in the executive branch falls far short of parity. For every country led by a woman, six are led by men, said the report.

Women comprise just 22 per cent of Cabinet members globally, a share that has declined over the past two years, pointing to a lack of political will to employ targeted appointments and other special measures, it said, pointing out that in conflict-affected countries, women's representation is even lower, averaging only 20 per cent.

Furthermore, the report highlighted inequalities across portfolios held by Cabinet ministers and in the resources available to ministries to carry out their work.

In conflict-affected countries, the disparities are sharper: men overwhelmingly head the ministries responsible for home affairs (97 per cent), finance (94 per cent), defence (91 per cent), justice (90 per cent) and foreign affairs (85 per cent).

This dominance extends to senior diplomatic roles, where men hold the majority of Permanent Representative positions: 83 per cent in New York, 72 per cent in Geneva and 69 per cent in Vienna, as of May 2026.

Such concentration of power limits the diversity of perspectives shaping decision-making and ultimately weakens peace processes and post-conflict recovery, the report argued.

CONFLICT & CRISES

The number of active armed conflicts has more than doubled in the past 15 years, and conflicts are becoming deadlier, the report emphasized.

"These trends are eroding our shared sense of humanity and subverting the human rights of women and girls."

The pattern is evident in the systematic suppression of women's human rights in Afghanistan under the Taliban, gender-based restrictions and targeted attacks by armed groups in Libya, Mali, Somalia and Yemen, the high number of women and girls killed and injured in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the widespread use of sexual violence by armed actors, among others, in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Sudan, and widespread attacks on women human rights defenders and organizations everywhere, said the report.

In 2025, the United Nations documented more than 37,000 civilians killed across 20 armed conflicts. One in four deaths was of a woman or girl, it pointed out.

It said that due to gender-related assumptions about combatants, civilian men are still more likely to be killed in war, but the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas has increased the number of casualties among women and girls.

"This is especially true for air strikes directed at residential homes, schools, health facilities, markets and camps for displaced people, without regard for international law."

For instance, it said that in Myanmar, the United Nations verified 982 civilian deaths from air strikes in 2025, including at least 368 women and 232 children, and the real number is likely much higher.

It said in Ukraine, casualties among women increased by 27 per cent in 2025 compared with the previous year, representing 40 per cent of all civilians.

More worryingly, the report said as a consequence of the increase in warfare, the number of cases of conflict-related sexual violence verified by the United Nations has more than doubled since the previous year and cases have almost quadrupled since 2022.

In the Sudan, warring parties have weaponized sexual and gender-based violence and the number of women and girls requiring support after experiencing such violence has quadrupled since the start of the war three years ago.

Meanwhile, in Haiti, the United Nations reported a 163 per cent increase in cases of sexual violence in 2025, with the overwhelming majority of verified cases being incidents of collective rape.

Furthermore, the report said less is known about the impact that war has on the mental health of women and girls, or the violence they suffer at home.

An independent study of adolescent girls affected by the education ban in Afghanistan found that nearly 90 per cent reported symptoms of depression and almost half reported suicidal thoughts, it noted.

The report said women's exclusion from peace negotiations is compounded by a lack of investment in their work.

It said the world is spending far more on waging war than building peace even as poverty, hunger and inequality are on the rise, climate change accelerates and progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is regressing.

Increased military expenditure has not made the world safer. In 2025, world military expenditure reached $2.9 trillion - the eleventh consecutive year of growth, it pointed out.

Notably, the increase in military spending is not matched by a similar increase in efforts by countries to prevent war and to build and sustain peace, including through the United Nations. The United Nations regular budget for 2025 was $3.72 billion - global military spending was 776 times that amount.

Citing some further examples, the report said the Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund has seen its budget nearly cut in half, and the budget cuts to the United Nations have forced the Organization to dramatically scale down its presence and reach in countries affected by conflict and crisis.

It said these reductions are happening in spite of the proven effectiveness of women-led conflict prevention and community mediation.

In 2025, the Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund supported over 15,000 women actively engaged in conflict prevention, resulting in over 992,000 community and individual-level conflicts being averted or resolved through local, regional and national gender-responsive mechanisms, or referred to such mechanisms.

Meanwhile, 40 per cent of women's organizations in crisis-affected settings expect to shut down temporarily or permanently within the next year because of severe funding shortfalls (see separate story). +