PRESS BRIEFING BY COMMISSION ON STATUS OF WOMEN

Women were not born vulnerable but were made vulnerable by persistent gender-based discrimination and that was why the work of the Commission on the Status of Women was so important, Dubravaka Simonovic, Commission Chair, told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this morning.

She said this point had been emphasized many times during the two-week deliberations of the Commission’s forty-fifth session which was scheduled to end today.  During the general debate, members had also stressed the need for a speedy implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and for a gender equality perspective in the forthcoming General Assembly special session on HIV/AIDS and the World Conference against Racism.

During the session, she added, the Commission had agreed on a multi-year work programme for 2002-2006 and it was expected to be adopted at the end of today.  The Commission had also agreed on specific thematic issues for the programme, two of which would be taken up each year.  They included the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality and eradicating poverty.  It had also considered ways of incorporating the outcome document from the special session held in June 2000, into the programme.

She said that the Commission had also tried to develop new working methods in order to make it more dynamic and enable it to produce better outcome documents.  During the session, it had held two panel discussions on gender and HIV/AIDS and gender and all forms of racial discrimination, in which presentations were made by experts from different parts of the world.  These issues were linked to two major United Nations events -- the World Conference against Racism and the special session on HIV/AIDS.  The Commission would be making strong recommendations to both meetings to ensure integration of a gender perspective in the deliberations.

Earlier, Yakin Erturk, Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women, said the workload of the Commission had been extraordinarily heavy this year.  As the current session was the first to be held since the special session on Women in June 2000 and the first of the new millennium, it meant the Commission was faced with a number of new and challenging issues.

She had stressed the importance of the multi-year work programme because this influenced national and local initiatives which affected the daily lives of women all over the world.

Agreed conclusions were expected to be adopted on the two thematic issues of gender and HIV/AIDS and gender and all forms of discrimination.  Also, a number of resolutions, some of which were on the Commission’s agenda each year, were expected to be adopted at the end of the current session. 

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