Commission on the Status of Women

More than 70 per cent of South Sudan’s people will struggle to survive the peak of the 2022 lean season, amid unprecedented food insecurity due to conflict, climate shocks, COVID-19 and rising costs, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned today.  WFP says 8.3 million people could face extreme hunger within months.

Responses to climate change, natural disasters and environmental degradations require active participation of women, who are the most affected by the impacts of those global challenges, speakers told the opening day of the Commission on the Status of Women’s annual session today, stressing the need to break away from male-oriented solutions.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ opening remarks to the Commission on the Status of Women, in New York today:

The Commission on the Status of Women concluded its sixty-fifth session today, approving a wide-ranging set of agreed conclusions that broadly reaffirm the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action — adopted at the landmark fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 — as “crucial” to fulfilling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as the world slowly emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pursuing gender equality cannot, and will not, be stopped by pandemics, sanctions, conflict, budget shortfalls or the perpetuation of conservative traditions, ministers and other Government representatives told the Commission on the Status of Women during a videoconference meeting on the penultimate day of its sixty-fifth session.

Domestic violence hotlines and programmes aimed at closing gender pay gaps are among an array of tools several States are using to integrate women’s empowerment into national sustainable development strategies, delegates told the Commission on the Status of Women, as it continued its sixty-fifth session with an interactive dialogue and general discussion.

The Commission on the Status of Women continued its sixty-fifth session today, with policymakers from Algeria, Mongolia, Egypt, Rwanda and the United Arab Emirates presenting national achievements in building out the normative, legal and policy frameworks essential for supporting women in all spheres of life.

While COVID-19 has highlighted and exacerbated structural inequalities disproportionately affecting females, new approaches are turning the pandemic into an opportunity to boost their involvement in politics and public life, ministers told the Commission on the Status of Women today, as it continued its sixty-fifth session with a morning-long general discussion.

The Commission on the Status of Women continued its sixty-fifth session today, resuming a general discussion and hosting an interactive dialogue via videoconference to investigate how building gender-sensitive COVID-19 response plans can shape more resilient, inclusive communities.

Current and former Government officials, many speaking candidly from personal experience, explored the daily threats faced by women in positions of authority — both offline and in the world’s “new public space”, the Internet — as the Commission on the Status of Women continued its work today.