Deputy Secretary-General urges leadership conference for sustainable development

to inject new momentum into women’s bid for equality, empowerment

Following is the text of United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro’s remarks at the International Conference on Women’s Leadership for Sustainable Development, as delivered in Jerusalem, yesterday, 18 November:

I am honoured to be with such a distinguished group of leaders today.  Let me thank Madam Minister, H.E. Ms. Tzipi Livni, Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, and the people and Government of Israel, for your kind hospitality, and for being such gracious hosts.

Thanks also go to MASHAV and the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center for organizing this important event, in cooperation with UNESCO.

I am particularly pleased to see some friends that I made two years ago, and that Mazal [Renford] is still energetic and bringing us all together.

The subject that brings us together is central to our collective efforts to create a better world for all:  How do we work to strengthen women’s leadership role in achieving sustainable development for all?

For decades, activists, academics and development practitioners worldwide struggled to increase our understanding of the gender and sustainable development nexus.  At the landmark UN Conference on Women, held in Nairobi in 1985, they argued that development required a gender analysis and perspective and a deeper understanding of the dynamics and power relationships within societies.

More than two decades earlier, the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center was founded by MASHAV as the first international training institute dealing with women and development.  I pay tribute to the groundbreaking work of MASHAV and the Golda Meir Center in this field.  We salute you as you celebrate your 50 years of MASHAV.  You have reason to b proud.  You have made an invaluable contribution towards enabling women to participate in the development process of their communities.

I experienced this first hand.  In my previous capacity as Tanzania’s Minister for Community Development, Gender and Children, I had the pleasure of participating in a MASHAV training course.  I can personally attest to the enriching and empowering value of your programmes.  And I continue to draw on that experience in my current role as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Like the Golda Meir Center, the United Nations community knows the deep and unbreakable connection between women and development.  We know that achieving gender equality and empowering women is not only a goal in itself.  It is also a condition for building healthier, better educated, more peaceful and more prosperous societies.

Seven years ago, at the Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to use the first 15 years of this new century to make decisive progress on alleviating poverty and hunger, on fighting disease and oppression, and on replacing inequality with opportunity.  They pledged a monumental struggle for sustainable development for all. And they gave us a clear, time-bound blueprint in the form of the eight Millennium Development Goals.

One of the Goals -- Goal 3 -- is specifically on gender equality and the empowerment of women.  But a gender perspective is imperative in the other Goals as well:  in Goal 1, on the eradication of poverty and hunger, because of the disproportionately high incidence of poverty among women; in Goal 2, on achieving universal primary education, because, out of more than 100 million children who are not in school, the majority are girls, and out of more than 800 million adults who cannot read, the majority are women; in Goal 4, on reducing child mortality, where serious inequalities in relation to the girl-child are often neglected in many contexts; in Goal 5, on reducing maternal mortality, because a woman in a developing country faces a lifetime risk of 1 in 75 of dying during pregnancy or childbirth, compared to a risk of 1 in 7,300 for a woman in a developed country; in Goal 6, on combating AIDS, because women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic; and in Goal 7, on promoting environmental sustainability, because ensuring that women have access to productive resources, including land, is critical for sustainable development.

Unless careful attention is paid to the discrimination against women across all Millennium Development Goals, the achievement of the Goals will be jeopardized.

At the midpoint in our race to the target date of 2015, we can report much progress.  Still, much remains to be done to combat extreme poverty, disease, illiteracy and gender discrimination around the world.  In spite of considerable efforts on the part of Governments and civil society, many countries -- particularly in Africa -- are not on track.

We must redouble our efforts in the seven years remaining until 2015.  We must form a true partnership for development, as called for in the eighth and last Millennium Development Goal.  That means mobilizing all stakeholders -- Governments, international organizations, civil society, the private sector, and communities and individuals around the world.  And it means incorporating a gender perspective into the strategies, programmes and activities designed to reach the Millennium Development Goals.

The United Nations system, through its funds, agencies and programmes around the world, is carrying out a wide range of activities in support of women’s role in sustainable development.

WFP’s [World Food Programme] school feeding programmes are making a difference in keeping girls in school. UNICEF’s [United Nations Children’s Fund] work focuses on levelling the playing field for girls and women by ensuring that all children have equal opportunity to develop their talents.  UNFPA’s [United Nations Population Fund] work on maternal health supports countries to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, and every birth is safe.  UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] ensures that governance programmes have a special focus on women, including by ensuring that women have the right, and the capacity, to vote.

UNIFEM [United Nations Development Fund for Women] places the advancement of women’s human rights at the centre of all its efforts, from ending violence against women to achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace, as well as war.  This is just a partial list.  We are doing much more -- from working to reverse the spread of AIDS among women and girls, to ensuring that women have equal rights to land and property.

But much more needs to be done.  The United Nations system needs to work better with Governments to establish truly joint programmes, driven by national priorities.  We need to work better as a team, so as to give countries access to a common entry point.

As many of you know, the High-level Panel on United Nations System-wide Coherence has presented proposals for strengthening the UN’s gender architecture.  The Secretary-General has encouraged Member States to actively consider these proposals.

In particular, we believe our cause would be significantly advanced by replacing several current structures with one dynamic UN entity.  Such a new body should be able to call on all of the United Nations system’s resources in the work to empower women and realize gender equality as a basis for sustainable development.

This Conference -- with the exceptionally high calibre of its participants -- presents us with a unique opportunity to advance our shared goals of empowering women and promoting sustainable development.

The vast array of topics you will be discussing -- from the impact of environmental degradation on women’s roles and the significance of education for gender parity, to how to improve governance at all levels and how to strengthen policy coherence and aid effectiveness, to name just a few -- are all extremely relevant to our march towards the Millennium Development Goals.

So let us use this forum to infuse new momentum into our collective endeavour to build a fairer, more equitable and more prosperous world for all -- for women, men, girls and boys.

I thank every one of you for your commitment, and I look forward to working in partnership with you in the years ahead.

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For information media • not an official record