Secretary-General praises ‘remarkable’ women’s leadership in governments worldwide,

Says more women needed as United Nations ambassadors, in new york remarks

 

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at a luncheon with women permanent representatives in New York, 24 June:

I’m delighted to be with you today -- but like you, I wish there were more of you.

With six women permanent representatives unable to attend, we have lost nearly a third of the group.

Out of 192 Member States, it is frustrating that only just over a tenth are represented by women.

Yet, I am heartened when I think of a story that Kazakhstan’s former Permanent Representative, Akmaral Arystanbekova, used to tell.

Ambassador Aitimova, as the current Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan, you may have heard this one.

In the early 1990s, Ambassador Arystanbekova and Louise Fréchette, then Canada’s Permanent Representative, would occasionally meet with other diplomats.  And Madame Fréchette would always say, “You see before you exactly half of the women permanent representatives to the United Nations.”

In other words, at the time, there were just four in total.  I’m glad to see the number has grown more than five-fold over the years.  But, we have a long way to go.  There are nearly 10 men for every one of you, meaning that half of the world’s population is represented at the United Nations by just a tenth of all ambassadors.  And there is not one woman representing her country on the Security Council.

To me, this simply defies common sense.  Everywhere I go, virtually all over the world, I meet with women at the highest levels of government who are demonstrating remarkable capability and leadership.  And I wonder, why aren’t more of them coming to the United Nations?  We need more women ambassadors, and I also need more women in senior positions across the United Nations system, including in the field.

As you know, I have been actively appointing senior women, from the Deputy Secretary-General to the head of the Department of Management to the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources to my top envoy in Liberia -- and more.  Just last week, I appealed at an open meeting of the Security Council for all countries to send me their female troops, police, diplomats and other personnel.  And I pledged to hire the qualified candidates as quickly as humanly possible.

Speaking more broadly, I am working to strengthen the United Nations Secretariat’s own gender machinery.  I’ve proposed to nearly double the staffing of the Office of my Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, and significantly increase the resources of the Division for the Advancement of Women.

And I am advocating consolidating resources that are now scattered among several structures into one new, dynamic gender entity.

I’m counting on your support in this effort.  But I am fully aware that you represent your countries at the highest level on all issues before the United Nations.  Many of you are playing a central role in negotiations on climate change, system-wide coherence, the Millennium Development Goals, HIV/AIDS and a range of other pressing issues.

If we do the math, it goes like this:  the fraction of United Nations permanent representatives who are women times the number of issues you deal with, multiplied by the various other roles you play, equals you working, on average, 200 times harder than most men here.

So I offer my highest praise to all of you, and my most sincere hope that the next time we meet the luncheon will be much, much more crowded and each of you will have a little less on your plate.

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For information media • not an official record