Sometimes, that support comes from changing people's minds. Flavia Buitrón belongs to an organization of Quechua women in Peru that raises awareness of indigenous women's issues. The pandemic has laid bare many painful truths, not least how tough and isolating the road is when we go through difficult times alone. We’ve seen how working in solidarity is the way to reach where we are heading faster. This International Women’s Day, on 8 March, we celebrate the women supporting other women, even when their own burdens are great and growing. When women uplift other women, we all rise.

Saúde das Manas (“Sisters’ Health”) project, a UNFPA partnership, aims is to strengthen the quality of reproductive health care in Brazil. The local health system provides services in COVID-19 times by setting up telemedicine offices at seven health-care clinics (called basic health units in Brazil). The clinics will provide online consultations with specialists in gynaecology and obstetrics. Before the telemedicine offices open, patients who require a more specialized consultation travel more than 100 kilometres away, mostly by boat.

Reformed cutters protect the next generation from female genital mutilation in Kenya

February is a busy month for retailers marketing the promise of “happily ever after” to girls around the world. But for tens of millions of girls, this is just a fairy tale. Their girlhoods are ending,not with storybook romance but with harmful rites of passage such as child marriage and female genital mutilation – practices believed to be increasing as the COVID-19 pandemic forces girls out of school and drags their families into poverty. UNFPA calls on leaders, community members and parents to take decisive action against female genital mutilation and early marriage.