Economic and Social Council

Amid the ongoing tragedy of maternal mortality and morbidity, reaching the unreachable must be the goal of strategies to improve maternal health care, while securing the promises of sustainable development required that poor women be “dealt in” to a green economy, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today.

Access to the most basic transport infrastructure was still lacking in many areas around the world, while changes were needed at all levels of society in the management of chemicals, participants said during today’s Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the nineteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Violence against women remained the most prevalent and pervasive form of human rights violations and its elimination depended on the effective implementation of standards to ensure that its root causes and consequences were pursued at all levels, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today, as it tackled a host of issues related to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment around the world.

The challenges presented by a fragile and uneven global economic recovery continued to threaten progress towards sustainable development, Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, told the Commission on Sustainable Development today at the opening of the week-long Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the Commission’s nineteenth session.

While more Governments were adopting laws and policies to address the multiple forms of violence against girls, those youths still bore the heaviest burden of the failure to secure equitable development for all — as victims of female genital mutilation, rape and both commercial and sexual exploitation — a scenario which, if left unchecked, would morally doom efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today.

Education was the gateway to economic opportunity and the key means for unlocking women’s potential, the Commission on the Status of Women was told today as it continued its high-level review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome of the General Assembly’s twenty-third special session on gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century.

The proverbial glass ceiling not only continued to curtail the aspirations of schoolgirls and women scientists and engineers around the world, but was best described in too many societies as a “cast-iron ceiling”, the Commission on the Status of Women was told today during two expert panels on bolstering the access of women and girls to science, technology, education and training.

While the last year had seen significant efforts to improve women’s status around the world — including the landmark creation of the United Nations new gender entity, UN Women — the global report card was decidedly mixed, but investment in girls’ education could propel both economic growth and women’s equality, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today, as she opened the fifty-fifth session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

The Commission on the Status of Women will hold its fifty-fifth session at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 22 February to 4 March 2011, two weeks that will bring together Government officials and representatives of the United Nations, civil society, the media and the private sector.

The Commission for Social Development wrapped up its forty-ninth session today by approving without a vote five draft resolutions calling for wide-ranging steps, from support for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the upcoming review of the action plan on ageing to improving the lot of youth, persons with disabilities and families.