While attempts to level the gender playing field had already resulted in more robust development gains in the past decade, that element must be central to the post-2015 agenda, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today, as some 60 speakers took the floor, including several Ministers who detailed their countries’ successes and the challenges.
While countries were on track to meet several of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, progress on those related to women and girls was uneven at best, ministers and other senior officials told the Commission on the Status of Women today, urging that more be done to accept women as equals in all areas of life.
The Commission on the Status of Women played a “catalytic” role in shaping global policy on gender equality, as well as in ensuring that the Economic and Social Council incorporated a gender perspective in its work, Council President Martin Sajdik told the women’s body today during day three of its fifty-eighth session.
Protecting women and girls from violence and discrimination was the ultimate responsibility of the State, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences told the Commission on the Status of Women today, pressing Governments to better address the legal gaps in protection, prevention and accountability.
With one year left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the 2015 target date, the international community must take decisive steps to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment became a reality, high-level speakers said today as the Commission on the Status of Women opened its fifty-eighth session.
The Commission for Social Development concluded its fifty-second session today with the approval of six draft resolutions for adoption by the Economic and Social Council that addressed issues of empowerment, older persons and the family, as well as one text that would hone the Commission’s own focus on visual health.
