Delegates urged the Commission on the Status of Women, on the third day of its annual session, to account for the differentiated impact climate change has on vulnerable groups ill-equipped to address the phenomenon — particularly rural, coastal and indigenous women — and empower these individuals to lead national and international efforts in response.
Targeted investments to promote gender equality — from global to local levels — must ensure that promises made are kept as the world forges an inclusive, sustainable path to tackle climate change consequences, delegates told the Commission on the Status of Women on the second day of its annual session.
Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ opening remarks to the Commission on the Status of Women, in New York today:
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.
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.
