On the eve of International Women’s Day, leading women’s rights campaigners at the United Nations and the African Union and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate criticized male-dominated governments Tuesday for excluding women from peace negotiations. They complained that governments are ignoring a U.N. resolution adopted in 2000 demanding equal participation for women in talks to end conflicts. Sima Bahous, head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality, lamented “the regression in women’s rights.” She told the Security Council that “we have neither significantly changed the composition of peace tables, nor the impunity enjoyed by those who commit atrocities against women and girls.” Also Read: DigitALL: Role of tech in promoting gender equality highlighted this Women’s Day Bahous, executive director of UN Women, called for “a radical change of direction.” She said action should be taken to mandate the inclusion of women at every meeting and in every decision-making process, with consequences for non-compliance. And funds should be channeled to women’s groups in conflict-affected countries where the money is most needed, she said. The Security Council was assessing the state of the resolution it adopted on Oct. 31, 2000, that stresses the important role of women in preventing and resolving conflicts and demands their equal participation in all efforts to promote peace and security. It also calls on all parties to conflicts to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, especially rape and other forms of sexual abuse. Also Read: Loss due to women’s exclusion from digital world could grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action: UN Chief Since the 20th anniversary of the resolution in 2020, Bahous said, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have imposed “gender apartheid” and war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region reportedly led to sexual violence “at a staggering scale.” Coups in conflict-affected countries in Africa’s Sahel and Sudan to Myanmar have dramatically shrunk the civic space for women’s organizations and activists, she added. The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women began its annual two-week session Monday focusing on closing gender gaps in technology and innovation. It is also examining digital harassment and disinformation aimed at women that fosters violent misogyny. Bahous cited a recent study that says politically motivated online abuse of women within Myanmar and from the country increased at least fivefold after that country's February 2021 coup. “This mainly takes the form of sexualized threats and the release of home addresses, contact details, and personal photos or videos of women who had commented positively on groups opposing military rule in Myanmar,” she said. Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, addressed the gender-based violence aspect of the U.N. resolution, saying that “more than 100 armed conflicts are raging around the world” and hard-won gains toward gender equality are being reversed. “This is no coincidence,” she said. “As respect for gender equality declines, violence rises.” Egger said the Red Cross sees “the brutal impact” every day of “sexual violence at the hands of arms bearers at shocking levels.” Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, who mobilized street protests against the brutality of the country’s long civil war and shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, told the council that “it has been proven time and again that men do make war but are unable to make peace themselves.” “Sadly, the conversation is the same in 2023,” she said. “How do we discuss the issue of peace and security and leave out fifty percent of the population?” Gbowee said that as the U.N. resolution on women, peace and security approaches its 23rd anniversary “investment in its implementation is either stalled or slow.” Action plans submitted by governments are “a tool for politicians and political actors to window-dress women peace and security issues as they cover up for their failure" to advance women’s rights, she said. Gbowee called for women peace activists to be part of all peace missions, calling them “custodians of their communities.” “We will continue to search for peace in vain in our world unless we bring women to the table,” she warned. Bineta Diop, the African Union Commission chair’s special envoy on women, peace and security, said in a virtual briefing to the council that the current impact of armed conflict on women and girls “is precarious.” Diop cited kidnappings in the Sahel, rape, killing and maiming of young girls and boys in Congo, and atrocities in the Lake Chad Basin and in East Africa, including “an unprecedented rate of sexual violence.” “Unfortunately, while many women are engaged in the community and peacebuilding initiatives, their voice is yet to be heard in peace negotiations and mediation where roadmaps to return to peace are drawn,” she said. Diop said the African Union is helping to promote African women leaders who can sit at peace tables and to bring women from rival regions together, as just happened at a retreat in Pretoria, South Africa, for Ethiopian women.

Chad’s longtime leader has died of wounds suffered during a visit to front-line troops battling a little-known rebel group, the military announced Tuesday, just hours after he was declared the winner of an election that would have given him another six years in power. The military quickly announced President Idriss Deby Itno’s son as the central African nation’s interim leader, succeeding his 68-year-old father who ruled for more than three decades. Some observers immediately questioned the chain of events leading up to Tuesday’s stunning announcement on national radio and television. Ayo Sogunro, a Nigerian lawyer and fellow at the South Africa-based Center for Human Rights, said that under Chadian law the term of an incumbent president who dies is completed not by family members but by the National Assembly. “The army seizing power and conferring it on the son of the president ... is a coup and unconstitutional,” Sogunro tweeted Tuesday, calling for the African Union to condemn the transfer of power. Deby’s 37-year-old son, Mahamat, is best known as a top commander of the Chadian forces aiding a U.N. peacekeeping mission in northern Mali. The military said Tuesday he now will head an 18-month transitional council following his father’s death. The military called for calm, instituting a 6 p.m. curfew and closing the country’s land and air borders as panic kept many inside their homes in the capital, N’Djamena. “In the face of this worrying situation, the people of Chad must show their commitment to peace, to stability, and to national cohesion,” Gen. Azem Bermandoa Agouma said. The circumstances of Deby’s death could not immediately be independently confirmed due to the remote location of the fighting. The government has released few details of its efforts to put down the rebellion in northern Chad, though it did announce Saturday that it had “totally decimated” one rebel column of fighters. The rebel group, known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, later put out a statement saying fierce battles had erupted Sunday and Monday. It released a list of five high-ranking military officials who it said were killed, and 10 others it said were wounded, including Chad’s president. The army only said Tuesday that Deby had fought heroically but was wounded in a battle. He was then taken to the capital where he died of unspecified wounds. Some residents of the capital, though, said they feared there was more to the story of Deby’s demise. “The rumors that are going around about the transitional council give me the impression that some information is false,” Thierry Djikoloum said. “They are already talking about dissolving parliament ... So for me, I’d say it was a coup d’etat. He was killed.” Some foreign observers also questioned how a head of state could have been killed, saying it cast doubt on his protective guard. The Chadian military has only acknowledged five deaths in weekend fighting in which it said it killed 300 rebels. “We still don’t have the whole story,” Laith Alkhouri, a global intelligence adviser, told The Associated Press. “It raises concerns regarding the security forces’ assessment of the clashes and their intelligence regarding the severity of the situation.” Other analysts pointed to Deby’s long history of visiting the battlefield as a former army commander-in-chief himself. “There’s no evidence to suggest this was a coup committed by his troops. Anyone who follows Deby knows he used to say ‘to lead troops you have to smell the gunpowder,’” tweeted Cameron Hudson with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Deby was a major French ally in the fight against Islamic extremism in Africa, hosting the base for the French military’s Operation Barkhane and supplying critical troops to the peacekeeping effort in northern Mali. French Defense Minister Florence Parly expressed her condolences to the Chadian people, in a news conference with her German counterpart in Paris. “What’s central to us now is that a process of democratic transition can be implemented and the stability of Chad preserved,” she said. “For the rest, she added, French authorities need “a bit more time” to analyze the situation. Earlier, the French presidency called Deby “a courageous friend.” Chad is losing “a great soldier and a president who worked non-stop for the security of the country and the stability of the region for three decades,” it said in a statement. Deby first came to power in 1990 when his rebel forces overthrew then-President Hissene Habre, who was later convicted of human rights abuses at an international tribunal in Senegal. Over the years Deby had survived numerous armed rebellions and managed to stay in power until this latest insurgency led by the Front for Change and Concord in Chad. The rebels are believed to have armed and trained in neighboring Libya before crossing into northern Chad on April 11. Their arrival came on the same day that Chad’s president sought a sixth term in an election several top opposition candidates boycotted.