Women’s rights are under threat from a “backlash” of conservatism and fundamentalism around the world, a United Nation panel warned on Friday.

The launch of a new partnership between the United Nations and European Union, is an essential tool to make violence against women and girls “a thing of the past”, said UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed on Tuesday.

The case of Noura Hussein Hammad Daoud, a Sudanese teenager convicted of fatally stabbing the man she was forced to marry, after he had allegedly raped her, highlights the country’s failure to tackle the tragedy of early and forced marriage, marital rape and other discrimination and violence against women and girls, the United Nations human rights office said on Friday.

The dangers of working as a journalist in Afghanistan have been dramatically underlined by an attack in the capital Kabul on Monday in which nine Afghan photographers and reporters were killed. They had gone to report on a suicide attack, and were targeted by a second suicide bomber when they arrived on the scene.