February 2026

Table of Contents

SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE DAY FOCUS

Special Focus: World Day Of Social Justice 2026

World Day Of Social Justice 2026 on Renewed Commitment to
Social Development and Social Justice 

Emphasis on poverty eradication:
Poverty entails more than the lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education
and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion as well as the lack of participation in decision-making. Various social groups bear disproportionate burden of poverty.
The World Social Summit identified poverty eradication as an ethical, social, political and economic imperative of mankind and called on governments to address the root causes of poverty, provide for basic needs for all and ensure that the poor have access to productive
resources, including credit, education and training. Recognizing insufficient progress in the poverty reduction, the 24th special session of the General Assembly devoted to the review of the Copenhagen commitments, decided to set up targets to reduce the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by one half by 2015. This target has been endorsed by the Millennium Summit as Millennium Development Goal 1.

UN COMMEMORATIVE DAYS – February

• February 6  – International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation
• February 20  – World Day of Social Justice

GNPHR NEWS AND EVENTS

See the GNPHR greeting video for Human Rights Day and the International Council of Psychologists’ ICP Day

Webinars 

March 11, 2026, 10 am EST / 4 pm CET – Dr. Rama Charan Tripathi – Social Inequalities at the Intersection of Psychology and Human Rights

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qasRjYWaRaC5XqbzuPvW-g#/registration

Stories

The water we have every day is less and less our water. Laura Vicuña Pereira Manso, Brazil

What happens to communities and peoples when their taditional sources of sustenance and life are changed?

General

The Vital Role of Psychological Science in the Implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Naomi Koerner, L. J. McCunn, & J. C. H. Tan, Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 2025. We are delighted to introduce to the readership of Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne a special issue titled “Contributions of Psychological Science to Understanding and Addressing Global Challenges.” The idea for this special issue was first proposed by several members of the International Relations Committee (IRC) of the Canadian Psychological Association/Société canadienne de psychologie (of which the three of us are members). Collectively, the five articles submitted by authors across 10 countries address a diverse range of themes, including the need to educate the next generation of psychologists about global challenges; climate change and climate action; modern slavery; and the challenges faced by women refugees and their support personnel. The special issue and IRC commentary bring attention to the many ways in which psychological science (and psychologists themselves) can contribute to an improved understanding of global challenges as captured in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, as well as to their resolution.

Moral Injury in an Age of Unravelling — The Challenges Facing Social Justice Work. Sipho Mthathi, Daily Maverick, 18 January 2026. Sipho
Mthathi, Daily Maverick, 18 January 2026. Sipho Mthathi is a writer and social justice activist with more than 23 years of experience shaping civil society work locally and internationally. We are living through a convergence of crises that strain not only our capacity to respond, but our capacity to make sense. Whoever you are, the weight of this moment is undeniable. Molo qabane, kunjani? (Greetings comrade, how are you?) This is how we greet one another, as fellow travellers in the pursuit of social justice. But that question feels heavier these days.
It is no longer just a greeting. It has become an invitation, sometimes an uncomfortable one, to name a specific kind of injury repeating itself among social justice actors. It is a pain that does not announce itself loudly, but gathers over time, in the quiet pauses, in the conversations that trail off before anyone quite knows how to continue. It is not simply exhaustion. Nor despair. Nor burnout in the conventional sense. It is moral injury. The slow damage that sets in when one’s deepest ethical commitments are repeatedly violated by the very systems meant to uphold them.

Lilian Thuram Foundation- Éducation Contre le Racisme. One isn’t born racist, one becomes racist. This reality stands as the corner stone of our foundation for education against racism and for equality. Racism is an intellectual, political and economic construction. We need to become aware that generation after generation, history has conditioned us to see ourselves first as Black, White, Arabs or Asians. Our differences stem from inequalities generated by domination mechanisms that must be deconstructed. Isn’t it time to consider ourselves first and foremost as human beings?

Academic Freedom / Freedom of Education

Expanded Global Gag Rule: The Trump Administration Prioritises Ideology over Human Life. ILGA World, Jan 2026. Geneva, 27 January 2026 — The Trump administration’s expansion of the Global Gag Rule is a violent attack on everyone’s freedoms and bodies, masqueraded as care for women and children, ILGA World said today. Through a package of three new policies, the Trump administration is pushing the Project 2025 playbook to its extremes, weaponising U.S. foreign aid to enforce an anti-rights ideological agenda worldwide.

SAR & Amnesty Launch New Academic Freedom Course on International Day of Education 2026, P. Patel, Scholars at Risk, 23 January 2026
On International Day of Education 2026, Scholars at Risk and Amnesty International launched a new academic freedom course designed to strengthen understanding of academic freedom principles and protections. The online course brings together expert perspectives and resources for educators, students, and human rights advocates.

Children/Youth

Warm Family of Origin is Associated with Earlier Disclosure of Sexual Abuse. Barge, C., Sijbrandij, M., Both, S., Van Ditzhuijzen, J., & Bicanic, I., European Journal of Psychotraumatology,, 2026. Background: Worldwide, about one in five female minors and one in 8–12 male minors
experience sexual abuse. However, for various reasons disclosure of these traumatic sexual experiences often does not occur, which may be associated with increased levels of distress.
Objective: To examine the extent to which factors in the family of origin are associated with the duration until disclosure of sexual abuse, the environment in which this abuse happens, and the extent to which these family and disclosure characteristics are associated with current psychological distress.
Method: Adults with sexual abuse experience(s) before the age of 18 (N = 961) completed an online questionnaire on characteristics of the family of origin (e.g. family climate, religious beliefs, communication about sexuality, adverse childhood experiences), characteristics of (potential) disclosure (e.g. duration and environment to whom the abuse was revealed first) and current levels of psychological distress (Kessler Psychological Distress 10; K10).
Results: Logistic and linear regression analyses showed that (a) a warm family climate was associated with shorter duration to disclosure, (b) strong religious beliefs in the family of origin were associated with longer duration to disclosure, (c) a warm family climate was associated with disclosing to someone close, and (d) a warm family climate, adverse childhood experiences, more open communication about sexuality and a shorter duration to disclosure were all associated with lower levels of current psychological distress.
Conclusion: The findings show that family characteristics are associated with early disclosurof sexual abuse. In turn, these family characteristics and the time of disclosure are associated with lower levels of current psychological distress. Future research may further investigate the nature of this association, so that guidance on how a safe home environment can help children disclose adverse experiences, such as child sexual abuse, can be developed and promoted.

West Bank: Children Forced by Israeli Forces from Refugee Camps a Year Ago Struggling to Eat, Attend School, amid Uncertainty. Save the Children, 21 Jan 2026. A year on since 32,000 people, including 12,000 children in the West Bank were displaced by Israeli forces, children are showing signs of mental deterioration including bedwetting,
refusing to eat and declining academic performance. Children forced from their homes in three refugee camps in the northern West Bank are living in overcrowded temporary accommodation and struggling with uncertainty over when they can return home, according to Save the Children staff working with displaced families.
RAMALLAH, Children forced from their homes in three refugee camps in the northern West Bank a year ago by Israeli forces are showing signs of mental deterioration including bedwetting, refusing to eat and declining academic performance, Save the Children said. Save the Children staff said many families lost their only source of income when they were forced to flee Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps during Israeli military raids and are now living with relatives in overcrowded apartments or in temporary accommodation, such as vacant university dorms, and rely on financial support.

Children’s Rights European Academic Network.
CREAN is an academic network of higher education institutions in Europe. Its mandate is to enhance exchange and collaboration amongst academic institutions of children’s rights in Europe.
CREAN is an academic network of more than 30 European universities that aims to enhance the academic field of children’s rights as an interdisciplinary field of studies and to reinforce the already existing ties between academic research and policies development. Through its networking activities, CREAN acts as a platform for the promotion and exchange of information on scientific research among its members. The network also acts as facilitator in the field of service provision and supports its members to undertake individual and collaborative consultancy mandates about children’s human rights.

Joint Statement on Artificial Intelligence and the Rights of the Child. International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2025.
This joint statement sets out a shared commitment to advancing a child rights-based approach to artificial intelligence. It is co-signed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), UNICEF, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), UNESCO, UNICRI, UNODA, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Representatives of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict and on Violence against Children, the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children, and Safe Online. The statement is co-branded by more than 50 organizations and calls for coordinated action to ensure that AI is designed, developed and governed in ways that respect, protect and fulfil the rights of the child.

Data Rights

Mental Liberty in the Age of Modern Technology (TAPOM Project). Tilburg University, 2026.
Modern technologies are increasingly enabling others to interfere with our minds, including our thoughts, desires, and emotions. To what extent should others be allowed to “read” and “modify” our minds? How should human rights protect the last fortress of privacy, that is, our mental privacy? How should they protect mental integrity? And what human rights protection should be provided against unsolicited interference with personal identity? In other words: how should human rights protect our “mental liberty”?

Democracy and Human Rights

Will Human Rights Survive a Trumpian World? Authoritarian Advance Threaten Rules-Based Order. Philippe Bolopion, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch, WORLD REPORT 2026, February 4, 2026.
The global human rights system is in peril. Under relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders have come to rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms. To defy this trend, governments that still value human rights, alongside social movements, civil society, and international institutions, need to form a strategic alliance to push back.
To be fair, the downward spiral predated Trump’s re-election. The democratic wave that began over 50 years ago has given way to what scholars term a “democratic recession.” Democracy is now back to 1985 levels according to some metrics, with 72 percent of the world’s population now living under autocracy. Russia and China are less free today than 20 years ago. And so is the United States.

The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World. Branko Milanovic, Allen Lane. 2025.
Global neoliberalism is on its last legs, while a new international economic order is taking hold. Trade blocs, tariff wars, economic sanctions, and national champions are in; nationalism, anti-immigration movements and the far-right are on the rise. Liberalism is being rejected by the civic realm, as the status quo of the past fifty years crumbles. What remains in its wake? Drawing on original research, leading economist Branko Milanovic reveals the seismic shifts that are shaping our world. He details the facts: how the rising economic power of Asia is creating a new global ‘middle class’ in the greatest reshuffle of incomes since the Industrial Revolution. He explores our fears: why are we becoming increasingly unhappy, when the world is becoming richer and more equal? And he shows us the fight ahead: as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving malcontent to breaking point. In The Great Global
Transformation, Milanovic provides an invaluable guide to the new 21st century.

Displaced/Migrants/Refugees/Stateless

Sociocultural Identification of Migrant Forensic Psychiatric Inpatients Facing Mandatory Repatriation – A Hospital Ethnography. Charlotte Clous, Hannah Jongsma, Anniek van Weeghel, Ria Reis, Wim Veling, Social Science; Medicine. March 2026.
In the Netherlands, terbeschikkingstelling (TBS) is a forensic psychiatric measure imposed on individuals who commit a criminal offence under diminished responsibility due to severe mental illness. For TBS patients without Dutch nationality, mandatory repatriation replaces resocialization as the final goal of TBS treatment, as they lose Dutch residency rights due to their offence. This article examines how this subgroup of TBS patients at a Dutch Centre for Transcultural Forensic Psychiatry reflect on and negotiate cultural identity at the intersection of criminal and migration law. Focusing on sociocultural identification, we adopt a dynamic and relational approach to cultural identity that attends to life histories, transnational social ties, institutional positioning and imposed categories of otherness reinforced by involuntary return policies. Data were gathered through in-depth life-course interviews, focus groups, and participant observation on four high-security wards between 2022 and 2024. Participants; narratives reflect chronic uprootedness and cultural fragmentation, but also highlight forms of resilience, as identities are redefined through lived experiences of ‘having been places’ and situational forms of belonging within transnational social contexts. Cultural identity emerges as layered and fluid, dynamically shaped across multiple social fields, rather than anchored in fixed national or ethnic categories. By centring lived experiences from within a highly regulated institutional setting, this study offers qualitative insight into how cultural identity takes shape under conditions of constrained agency and prolonged uncertainty, and highlights the implications of these processes for forensic psychiatric care. Substantiated with the experiences of individuals whose voices are rarely heard, this article delivers a critical analysis of a system in which people risk being lost or caught between equally impossible future perspectives.

Refugees’ Post-Arrival and Displacement-Related Perceptions in Malaysia and Portugal. Ling Ling TaiI, Rita GuerraI, Kinga Bierwiaczonek, Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences IACCP, 2025. This research was supported by a grant from the International Council of Psychologists to the first author and a grant from the Research Council of Norway, Norway, to the third author for the project ACCA (Antecedents of Cross-Cultural Adaptation, Project No. 325260). Countries receiving refugees can vary dramatically in their policies toward this group
(e.g., recognition of refugee status, legal protections), but the role of the receiving country context for refugee adaptation process is under investigated. This cross-sectional study (N = 318) investigates refugees’ perceptions of the forcedness of their displacement and perils related to it, perceived discrimination, and subjective well-being in two different country contexts: Portugal and Malaysia. Results showed perceptions of discrimination and displacement-related perils were significantly higher among refugees in Malaysia, while subjective well-being and perceptions of forcedness were significantly higher for refugees in Portugal. For both groups, perceived discrimination and perceptions of forcedness had a significant and negative relation with subjective well-being but were not associated with related perils. In contrast to theoretical predictions, perceptions of forcedness, related perils and country-context did not moderate the relationship between perceived discrimination and subjective well-being. We propose that the differences between refugees in Malaysia and Portugal are a product of specific social and political factors. Limitations, practical implications, and future research avenues are discussed.

Education

How Education Is Helping Heal Communities in Sudan, A. Vadala, UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency, 23 January 2026.
In Sudan’s White Nile State, the reopening of schools is helping displaced and local communities recover from conflict and restore hope for children whose education was disrupted. Only months ago, the school’s classrooms stood empty and dilapidated. Now, new desks are arranged in rows within freshly painted rooms with new windows and doors. White Nile State currently hosts an estimated 400,000 refugees and around 460,000 internally displaced people. Enrolment has surged since the school reopened to hundreds of displaced and local children, offering over 700 girls a chance to resume learning. “Education is very important for both girls and boys, but especially for girls – it gives them knowledge and awareness of their rights,” said Headteacher Susan Zein Faisal Allah Al-Kamali.

Inclusion, Exclusion, Racism

The Role of Ethnic Identity in Preserving the Future Expectations of Justice-Involved Black Male Youth in the United States following Direct Victimization. Smith, C. D. IV, Randolph, I., Beardslee, J., Cauffman, E. Psychology of Men; Masculinities, 2025,
Black males in the United States are at heightened risk for victimization. Additionally, Black males are overrepresented in the legal system, compounding their risk for victimization. Survivors of victimization have been shown to develop more pessimistic views of their future. For Black male youth, these beliefs are essential for fostering motivation and, ultimately, driving their success. The present study examines whether ethnic identity buffers the association between victimization (direct and vicarious) and future expectations.

Prophetic Psychology: A Future-Oriented, African-Centered Theory of Identity, Healing, and Human Flourishing. John Egbeazien Oshodi, European Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2026. Prophetic Psychology is introduced as a future-oriented, African-centered theory of identity, healing, and human flourishing. Grounded in African epistemology and the lived realities of African-descended populations, the theory argues that human functioning is shaped not only by past experiences and present circumstances but by symbolic foresight, temporal self-authorship, and intergenerational responsibility. These dimensions are underdeveloped in Euro-American psychological models. Prophetic Psychology outlines seven domains of prophetic functioning and proposes a culturally rooted framework for narrative identity, resilience, and social transformation. Applications span clinical practice, education, youth development, and institutional reform. This manuscript clarifies the model’s African-centered foundations, distinguishes it from existing theories, and highlights future pathways for research and assessment.

Greed Is the Iron Cage of Our Times — Why Nationalism Is Here to Stay. Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz, Nature,  January 2026.
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00186-8
A generation that missed out on economic growth is driving the trends overtaking politics today, Korzeniewicz argues in this commentary for Nature. The piece reflects on how inequality, economic stagnation, and unmet expectations

Humanizing the Transgressor, Dehumanizing the Victim: The Asymmetric Effects of Transgressors’ Good Intentions in Immoral Behaviour. S. Moreno‐Gata, R. Rodríguez‐Torres, V. Betancor, A. Rodríguez‐Pérez, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2026. Dehumanization is a potential consequence of moral judgments that may influence how people perceive and relate to those involved in a moral transgression. We propose that a transgressors intentions shape perceptions of both transgressors’ and victims’ humanness. In Study 1 (n = 315), we examined the dehumanization of the transgressor while manipulating their intentions (good vs. bad) and the consequences of their actions. In Study 2 (n = 341), we focused on the dehumanization of the victim, and we manipulated the transgressors intentions and transgressor–bystander closeness. Intentions significantly influenced humanness attributions in both cases. Transgressors with good intentions were less dehumanized than those with bad intentions, regardless of consequences. Moreover, having good intentions increased the dehumanization of the victim, independently of closeness. These effects were serially mediated by the greater likability and the attribution of a positive moral character to the transgressor. Our findings have implications for understanding social conflict, justice, and interpersonal evaluations.

Labor and Organizations

More or Less Dissimilar: an Additive Approach to Dissimilarity and Inclusion at Work. Onur Şahin, Jojanneke van der Toorn, Wiebren S. Jansen, Naomi Ellemers, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 2025.
While the relational demography literature has explored the consequences of surface-level (visible traits like ethnicity and gender) and deep-level (underlying attributes such as work experience) dissimilarity, it remains unclear how being dissimilar across multiple specific dimensions concurrently relates to employees perceived inclusion. This study addresses that gap by examining how dissimilarity on specific dimensions relates to perceived inclusion and whether employees perceive less inclusion when they perceive dissimilarity on more dimensions. Additionally, we investigate whether these relationships are contingent on perceptions of organizational climate for inclusion. As organizations become increasingly diverse, new challenges emerge. Within these changing workplaces, a growing number of employees are or feel dissimilar to their coworkers. This matters, as dissimilar employees often report lower attachment, creativity, job satisfaction and group fit, and higher turnover, absenteeism, stress and relationship conflict. A crucial factor in these relationships appears to be employees perception of social inclusion, namely, the feeling that the group provides them with a sense of belonging and ability to be themselves in the organization.

Mental Health and Human Rights

Archives, Mental Health Systems, and the History of Mental Health in Colonial South India: Critical Questions. Sudarshan R Kottai & Sathya D., Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, December 2025.
Emerging trends in the history of mental health globally emphasise the need to critically examine the history of mental health, and this applies to colonial India as well. However, despite the inseparable relationship between social hierarchies (such as race and caste) and mental health outcomes, we find that archival sources on mental health in colonial South India remain inaccessible, limiting researchers’ ability to understand the complexities and nuances of this relationship. Despite an extensive search through state archives, records of mental health institutions, and other government departments, anticipated sources remain elusive. We argue that mainstream mental health systems exhibit a lack of sensitivity to the socio-historical roots of mental health crises and are plagued by systemic issues, such as staff shortages and limited access to sources, which contribute to a poor understanding of marginalised peoples’ experiences. Mental health systems need to deepen their awareness of the socio-historical determinants of human suffering. This is vital to realising an ethical, people-centred mental healthcare ecosystem.

Iran’s Mental Health-Care Capacity and Policy Reforms in Response to a Global Refugee Crisis. M. Rajabi, C. J. Black, T. S. Betancourt, R. Calam, F. Ashrafi, S. L. Halligan, The Lancet Psychiatry, 2025. Forcibly displaced individuals are a rapidly growing population worldwide, most of whom resettle in low-income and middle-income countries where economic hardship, sociopolitical instability, and poor infrastructure are prevalent. These intersecting challenges can substantially impede host countries capacity to deliver essential services, such as health care, education, and social welfare, to both resident and displaced populations.
Iran currently hosts the largest refugee population in the world, with over 3.5 million forcibly displaced individuals, the majority from Afghanistan. Despite limited international support, the government has taken steps toward inclusive health and education policies for refugees; however, a comprehensive policy and legislative framework for refugee mental health care remains underdeveloped.

WHO QualityRights Act, Unite and Empower for Mental Health. Dear colleagues, 9-2-2026, Over the past months, WHO has undergone considerable restructuring. As a result, the Unit on Policy, Law and Human Rights has been closed, and both Natalie Drew and I will be leaving WHO. We wanted to take a moment to sincerely thank you for your participation, collaboration and interest in the work that our team has developed over the years. Many of these tools are now being used by countries and stakeholders around the world, and their impact has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals – providing a strong evidence base to support their continued use. Two important research publications (links below) were released in 2025, but they represent only a fraction of the broader body of research produced by our team and collaborators.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40820972/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41365627/. Below is a selection of the key tools that we leave behind. We very much hope that you will continue to use them and promote them widely – this feels more important than ever now
that our unit is no longer in place.
Dr Michelle Funk, World Health Organization
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-qualityrights-guidance-and-training-tools

Peace / Violence and War 

DR Congo

Gaza/Israel

Health-Care Professions’ Silent Complicity in Palestine’s Health Crisis. Kavita Algu, The Lancet,  January 17, 2026.
The Lancet Oct 4, 2025, cover cites a Correspondence 1 on Gaza by Alessandro Vitale and colleagues, which states “Staying silent while pretending to be neutral is in effect, a form of complicity”. Institutions have not simply remained silent—many actively silence those who speak, while maintaining investments and partnerships that materially sustain the destruction of health in Palestine.
During last yeas wave of Palestine solidarity encampments, most medical faculties did not support students calling for disclosure and divestment—demands rooted in protecting Palestinian life, health, and land. As Gaza transformed to rubble, my school, the University of Toronto (Toronto, ON, Canada), took the students to court—a pattern repeated at campuses worldwide. The then Dean of Medicine authored an affidavit that the university submitted to support its case. The university claimed, in part, that the encampment was violent and associated with antisemitism—allegations the court deemed unfounded. 2,3 Rather than supporting vulnerable students urgently protesting genocide, institutions frequently choose repression. Beyond silencing, numerous medical societies and institutions uphold ties with Israeli entities sustaining crimes and maintain substantial investments in military resources. When these relationships are questioned, we are told that reconsidering partnerships or investments violates academic freedom or neutrality. Sustaining crimes against health is not a neutral position.
In 2023, children held a press conference outside Al-Shifa Hospital (Gaza City, Palestine) pleading: “we want medicine, food and education, and want to live as the other children live”. 4 Since the announcement of a ceasefire agreement, as of Oct 10, 2025, the Israeli military has killed 399 Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and continues to hold at least 95 health-care workers hostage. 5–7 More than 16 500 Palestinians, including 4000 children, are in critical condition awaiting medical evacuation, 8 which is still being blocked by the Israeli Government. It is imperative that medical institutions move beyond breaking their silence; they must stop enabling the crimes committed against the people of Palestine.

The Peace Psychology Digest, Issue 3, February 8, 2026. Alma Jeftić Editor. This issue is dedicated to Black History Month and moral psychology. History has taught us that these two should belong together, yet the present fails to confirm that statement. Black History Month is not only a commemoration of achievement; it is also a call to remember how systems of exclusion are built, justified, and resisted across generations. Moral psychology helps us examine exactly those processes: how harm becomes normalized, how insult becomes justified, how indifference is sustained, and how apology is precious.

Women

Safeguarding Women and Girls in the Age of AI. Editorial, The Lancet, Volume 14, Issue 3. March 2026.
As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become increasingly embedded in global health research and practice, they offer new opportunities to address gaps in women’s health, including maternal health and gender equity. Additionally, as shown by Peige Song and colleagues in this issue, AI could help identify and prioritise research directions that address the needs of marginalised groups. Yet these technologies may also be misused to amplify harm and perpetuate inequities. The recent Grok AI scandal, involving the non-consensual creation and dissemination of explicit sexual images of women and girls through generative AI, is a clear warning of the misuse of AI. With their growing use, an urgent question  emerges: how can we ensure that the rapid advancement of AI serves to respect and protect women, rather than expose them to new forms of risk and injustice? In line with this years International Women’s Day theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls”, we call for collective action to advance the rights of all women and girls. By championing justice and meaningful participation, the global health community can leverage AI to accelerate progress towards gender and sex equity in health, ensuring that no woman or girl is left behind.

Don’t Rock the Boat! Do Men Prefer Women Leaders who Support the Status Quo? Belle Derks, Francesca Manzi, Colette van Laar, Naomi Ellemers, British Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 65, 2, April 2026.
Women remain underrepresented in leadership, particularly in traditionally masculine work settings. At the same time, the visibility of this imbalance has led to growing calls for diversifying leadership. This research examines how both men and women contribute to the preservation or disruption of gender inequality in masculine organizational contexts. Me remain the gatekeepers of change—deciding who rises to the top and under what conditions—while women face the strategic dilemma of fitting in by downplaying inequality (supporting the status quo, sometimes called ‘queen bee behaviour’) or ‘rocking the boat’ by advocating social change (challenging the status quo). Across five experimental studies (total N = 887), we examined how evaluators assessed male and female leadership candidates who either supported or challenged the status quo. Results revealed that although men favoured female over male candidates, they consistently preferred women who reinforced the status quo over those who advocated equality. By contrast, male candidates who supported the status quo were penalized, and female evaluators showed no such preferences. These findings highlight subtle mechanisms through which gendered power dynamics are maintained, underscoring both the strategic trade-offs women must navigate to advance and the conditional nature of men’s support for gender equality.

OPPORTUNITIES
Resources/Publications/Events

Resources

The European Convention on Human Rights in Practice. Teaching Resources. 2026 Edition, reviewed by Ali Bozkaya and Oleg Soldatov.
For teachers, a dynamic tool for pupils about learning and understanding their rights. Raising awareness of human rights among young people is one of the Council of Europe’s most important missions. Help your students to forge a democratic tomorrow with these highly accessible teaching resources. This instructive brochure gives a comprehensive overview of the European Convention on Human Rights and the different rights contained within it. It also details the work of the European Court of Human Rights and how its judgments affect our daily lives. Finally, it includes case studies and practical exercises for group activities – students can discover and share how human rights have a major impact on each and every one of us. With both a theoretical and practical content, the brochure provides a dynamic resource to help teachers foster awareness of human rights. It will be a valuable resource for teaching professionals, volunteers and youth leaders.

Health and Human Rights
Mission Statement: Health and Human Rights provides an inclusive forum for action-oriented dialogue among human rights practitioners and scholars. The journal endeavors to increase access to human rights knowledge in the health field by linking an expanded community of readers and contributors. Following the lead of a growing number of open access publications, the full text of Health and Human Rights is freely available to anyone with internet access.
Health and Human Rights is an international journal dedicated to scholarship and praxis that advance health as an issue of fundamental human rights and social justice. It seeks to provide a forum for academics, practitioners and activists from public health, human rights and related fields to explore how rights-based approaches to health can be implemented in practice. In so doing, it contributes to fostering a global movement for health and human rights.

Mental Health and Human Rights Resources

Publications

Minds, Freedoms and Rights. On Neurorehabilitation in Criminal
Justice. Sjors Ligthart, Emma Dore-Horgan, Gerben Meynen, Cambridge
Examines the possibilities offered by cognitive sciences in conducting risk assessments and management. This book informs lawyers, ethicists, and policymakers about the implications of negative and positive human rights for neurorehabilitation in criminal justice. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Forced Migration and Health Justice. Lisa A. Eckenwiler et al.
(eds). Oxford University Press, March 2026. Focuses on forced migration, health, ethics, and justice – Analyses forced migration through a structural injustice lens, comprehensively examining the structural roots of the threats to migrants' health – Includes never-before- published interviews with migrants and a table of compacts and conventions related to the health of migrants.

The Rozana Programs: Health Diplomacy in the Middle East. Wajdi
Bkeirat, In: Fritzsche, K., McDaniel, S.H., Wirsching, M. (eds) Psychosomatic Medicine. Springer, 2026.
Since 2013, Project Rozana has developed a model of health diplomacy that connects Palestinian and Israeli healthcare professionals and institutions to improve access to healthcare, strengthen professional capacities, and foster mutual understanding in a protracted conflict setting. Major barriers to joint activities  included restrictions on physical access and social concerns about engagement, alongside mutual mistrust. Despite severe disruptions following the Israel–Hamas war beginning on October 7, 2023, Rozana’s programming not only continued but also adapted and expanded. Initiatives such as joint clinical training, mobile clinics, cross-border fellowships, and patient transport services demonstrated the potential of healthcare as an entry point for building trust and promoting cooperation in conflict-affected regions. With the agreement of Rozana’s leadership, this chapter was adapted by Susan H McDaniel PhD from Rozana’s 2025 Impact Evaluation Report.

Teaching about the violent past: Opportunities and Challenges
for Teachers in Conflict-Affected African Societies. Line Kuppens & Justin Sheria Nfundiko, Leuven University Press, October 2025.
Policy recommendations and strategies to support teachers in addressing the violent past. Education plays a vital role in fostering reconciliation and teaching peace in conflict-affected societies. In particular, teaching about the violent past from multiple perspectives helps replace fear and hatred with mutual understanding. While conflict-history education has been explored across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, curricular reforms often overlook teachers, despite their key role in achieving success.
Building on insights from education sciences, sociology, political sciences, memory studies and social psychology, this book introduces a novel and interdisciplinary framework to analyse secondary school teachers’ engagement with conflict-history education, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It focuses on three distinct locations, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, that differ in the intensity of violence experienced and the time elapsed since conflict ended.
This practice-oriented book aims at identifying teachers’ needs to feel confident and competent in driving reconciliation in their classrooms and provides actionable policy recommendations and teaching strategies to support them in this essential role.

Gender-Based Violence in the Caribbean: Historical Roots, Contemporary Continuities. Edited by Dalea Bean and Verene A. Shepherd, Paperback, 602 pages, Published 17 Dec 2025. Based Violence in the Caribbean: Historical Roots, Contemporary Continuities is a landmark collection that addresses one of the region’s most pressing crises. Edited by Dalea Bean and Verene A. Shepherd, the volume traces the historical roots of gender-based violence, showing how enslavement, colonial domination and systemic inequalities became embedded in cultural norms and everyday life. Contributors draw on court records, literature, music, oral histories and archival sources to uncover how violence, physical, psychological and symbolic, was normalized and perpetuated across generations.

The Oxford Handbook of Intersectional Approaches to Migration,
Gender, and Sexuality. Gökce Yurdakul, Jean Beaman, et.al., Oxford Academic, 24 June 2025.
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.

Podcasts

Emma Bellamy, Podcasts presenting stories of Australia-based immigrants and refugees, along with insights from migration experts and professionals.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The Affordability Crisis and the Road to Peace in Israel-Palestine. Wednesday, Feb 25 from 6:30 pm to 8:15 pm. New York, NY.
Join Rula Daood and Uri Weltmann, Palestinian and Jewish members of Standing Together’s leadership in a conversation on their grassroots movement, next steps beyond this imperfect ceasefire, how the addressing the affordability crisis and how joint Jewish-Palestinian organizing on the ground is the key to ending the occupation and achieving a just peace.

The Fight Is Not Over- From Ceasefire to a Just Peace. Thursday, Feb 26 from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Washington, DC. Join Rula Daood and Uri Weltmann, Palestinian and Jewish members of Standing Together’s leadership in a conversation in conversation with Khalil Sayegh (Executive Director of Agora Initiative) on their grassroots movement, next steps beyond this imperfect ceasefire and how joint Jewish-Palestinian organizing on the ground is the key to ending the occupation and achieving a just peace.

The Fight Is Not Over- From Ceasefire to a Just Peace. Tuesday, Mar 3 from 7 pm to 8:30 pm. Durham, NC. Join Rula Daood and Uri Weltmann, Palestinian and Jewish members of Standing Together’s leadership in conversation with Dr. Wesley Hogan of Duke University on their grassroots movement, next steps beyond this imperfect ceasefire and how joint Jewish-Palestinian organizing on the ground is the key to ending the occupation and achieving a just peace.

Black History Tour at the United Nations. To mark Black History Month, the United Nations Visitors Services is pleased to offer a 10% discount on the Black History Tour. This tour provides a unique perspective on how the lives of people of African descent have shaped the mission of the United Nations in areas such as peace and security, as well as human rights. The Black History Tour highlights significant topics, including decolonization, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the triumph over apartheid, and the Ark of Return—a permanent memorial honoring the victims of slavery. Please check our calendar for available dates, and if no availability is listed, please contact toursunhq@un.org. Use promo code 26BH10UN at checkout for a 10% discount.

BOOK THE IN-PERSON BLACK HISTORY TOUR 

BOOK THE VIRTUAL BLACK HISTORY TOUR 

International Network for Peace Psychology (INPP) Conference, March 23 to 27, 2026 (Manila, Philippines). ​Every two years, the International Network for Peace Psychology (INPP) coordinates International Symposia on the Contributions of Psychology to Peace. The Symposia take place all around the world, and aim to foster a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive global community of scholars and practitioners working for peace, social justice, and sustainability using a rich mix of research and practice. Symposia provide an intimate and engaged platform for presenting and discussing current scholarship in peace psychology and for engaging in intercultural exchange of ideas and experiences.

Pacifism and Nonviolence Workshop, The workshop will be held on up to three days between 13 April and 1 May 2026 (precise dates to be confirmed). It will be entirely online (using Zoom), hosted by Loughborough University’s Institute of Advanced Studies

Annual Psychology Day at the United Nations

Psychological Contributions to Fostering Collective Action in Uncertain Times: Advancing Human Rights in a World in Conflict. Co-Chairs, Harleen Kaur, Ph.D. (O.P. Jindal Global University, India) and Gurusewak S. Khalsa, Ph.D. (The American University, Cairo). 19th Annual Psychology Day at the UN April 23, 2026.

Sixteenth International Sakharov Conference. Authoritarianism on the Rise: Fifty years after the founding of the Helsinki Movement. https://fgip-global.org/sixteenth-international-sakharov-conference-authoritarianism-on-the-rise-fifty-years-after-the-founding-of-the-helsinki-movement/

Frontiers of Children’s Rights Summer School
The 12th edition of the Frontiers of Children’s Rights Summer School will take place from 29 June to 3 July 2026, in Leiden, Netherlands.
Course information – The Frontiers of Children’s Rights Summer School will take a close look at contemporary children’s rights issues from a legal perspective, accompanied by reflections from other academic disciplines, legal systems, local perceptions and realities.
Programme – The programme is being developed by Prof. Ton Liefaard, Head of the Department of Child Law, Leiden Law School (Leiden University) and UNICEF Chair in Children’s Rights and Prof. Ann Skelton, Programme Director of the  Master of Laws Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights (Leiden University), and the former Chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. This year’s theme is “Advancing Children’s Rights Globally: Accountability and Access to Justice.”
Registration is now open. To begin the registration process, please email your CV and cover letter to Ms Rehana Dole (n.r.s.dole@law.leidenuniv.nl). Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Target audience, This summer school is aimed at professionals, academics and law students (who have completed at least three years of their degree) with a background in law. Applicants with a background in other relevant disciplines that are relevant to the theme of the summer school will be considered as well.

Global Mental Health and Human Rights: Confronting 21st-Century Authoritarianism and Racial Supremacy, July 6-10, 2026, Venice. Call for applications: – March 10, 2026.
Course information, This summer school examines the intersections of global mental health, human rights, warfare, political violence, displacement, and structural inequalities. It introduces approaches including Liberation Psychology, critical global mental health, and intersectional feminist and postcolonial perspectives, with an emphasis on participatory tools for work in conflict-affected and politically turbulent settings. The programme will be led by faculty including Guido Veronese (University of Milano-Bicocca), Alex L. Pieterse (Boston College), and Ashraf Kagee (Stellenbosch University), with guest speaker Urmitapa Dutta (University of Massachusetts Lowell). Target audience, Applications are welcome from PhD students, young researchers, and practitioners working in mental health, international relations, law, gender and race studies, social work, education, psychology, psychiatry, public health, and related fields. The school is also open to activists, NGOs, and policy stakeholders.
Registration is now open. Applicants must submit an application form, letter of motivation, CV, and photo. For further information, please contact: summerschools@univiu.org

You can follow the meetings of the Human Rights Council by the United Nations Web TV: https://webtv.un.org/en/search/categories/meetings-events/human-rights-council

ENDNOTES

CONTACTS: Published by the Global Network of Psychologists for Human Rights – www.humanrightspsychology.org

Disclaimer: The website of the Global Network of Psychologists for Human Rights (GNPHR) contains articles, events and news about the domain where psychology and human rights intersect. The information presented in this Bulletin, does not imply that the GNPHR shares the views and beliefs in the articles.

• @GNPHR1
• How to get involved – read how you can contribute to the global network
• Consider contributing a Blog/Commentary
• News and Bulletins from the GNPHR – Subscribe to GNPHR
• Email addresses:
  • blogeditor@humanrightspsychology.org
  • info@humanrightspsychology.org
  • globalnetworkgnphr@gmail.com

Ways to Participate in Global Network Activities

• Share Your Experiences and Examples
  One of the best ways to illustrate the intersection of psychology and human rights is through example. We are looking for examples of your encounters with human rights issues in your professional life. You might describe a time when you protected (or failed to protect) human rights, or advocated for what you saw as a human rights issue. The events might be in your clinical, research, academic, applied, or volunteer work. Please send your narrative / story (500-1000 words) to Marlena Plavšić (marlena_plavsic@hotmail.com). We will compile these for publication in the GNPHR Bulletin and on the website. Please also indicate if you would like your stories to remain anonymous.
• Share your Expertise and Opinions
  We invite you to contribute a blog or opinion piece on general human rights issues; human rights education or strategies for raising the profile of human rights within psychology or your professional life. Students are welcome to contribute, including on student needs for learning about and addressing human rights. Please contact the GNPHR Blog editor (blogeditor@humanrightspsychology.org) with ideas for the article you would like to write!
• Send articles/news/events
  If you come across a human rights article or news, or know of an upcoming human rights event, please send for publication in the Bulletin. Send to the Bulletin editor Polli Hagenaars (polli.hagenaars@gmail.com).