UN EXPERT GROUP MEETING TO DISCUSS WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT, POVERTY ERADICATION

UN EXPERT GROUP MEETING TO DISCUSS WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT, POVERTY ERADICATION

The Division for the Advancement of Women will convene an expert group meeting on the theme of "Empowerment of women throughout the life cycle as a transformative strategy for poverty”, which will be hosted by the Government of India in New Delhi, from 26 to 29 November 2001.  The main emphasis of the meeting will be on policies and programmes for women that promote their empowerment within the context of globalization. 

Though the issue of poverty has always been a major concern in the work of the United Nations, the challenge of its eradication remains on top of both the international and national agendas.  Through global United Nations conferences and summits, a set of interconnected and mutually reinforcing goals and targets have been agreed to by governments in order to combat poverty.  With a growing recognition that poverty has a significant gender dimension, the recommended strategies also emphasize the importance of achieving the goals of gender equality and advancement of women in poverty-eradication efforts.

The issue of women’s empowerment and poverty eradication was addressed during the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly entitled

“Women 2000:  gender equality, development and peace in the twenty-first century” (Beijing+5).  Governments were called on to strive to reduce the disproportionate presence of women living in poverty by implementing national poverty-eradication programmes with a focus on a gender perspective and the empowerment of women, including short- and long-term goals.  This appeal was reinforced in the United Nations Millennium Declaration (A/Res/55/2) in which governments resolved

“to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than a dollar a day” and “to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable”. 

The meeting will aim to refine and expand an agenda for “action to be taken” at both the international and national levels to eradicate poverty, as outlined in the Beijing Platform for Action and in the outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly.  The findings and conclusions of the expert group meeting will provide a basis for the preparation of the Secretary-General’s report on “Eradicating poverty, including through the empowerment of women throughout their life cycle in a globalizing world” to be submitted to the forty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (4 to 15 March 2002).

Experts at the meeting will include Jacqueline Adhiambo-Oduol (Kenya); Bina Agarwal (India); Jeanine Anderson (Peru); Savitri Bisnath (United States);

Simel Esim (United States); Kusum Gopal (India); Sherin Saadallah (Sweden); Susil Sirivardana (Sri Lanka); and Nina Strandberg (Sweden).  Shahrashoub Razavi of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), who has prepared a background paper for the meeting, will also participate.  In addition, observers from the United Nations system (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)), intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, academia and interested governments will attend.

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