After all-night negotiations, the Commission on Population and Development capped its forty-seventh session in the early hours of 12 April with the adoption of a consensus resolution, urging Governments to address gaps in implementing the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action, notably in the areas of human rights, gender equality and equitable access to health care, including for sexual and reproductive health.
For young people to reach their potential as “agents of progress”, it was crucial to involve them in the planning, development and monitoring of programmes that affected their lives, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Youth told the Commission on Population and Development today, drawing particular attention to the situation of adolescent girls.
Citing steps to stamp out violence in the home, maternal mortality and sexually transmitted diseases, representatives of small island developing States shed light on their respective national schemes to implement the 1994 landmark population and development accord, as the Commission on Population and Development continued its session today.
While the last 20 years had seen remarkable gains in achieving universal education, reducing maternal mortality, and increasing access to sexual and reproductive health services, growing inequity was preventing the most marginalized from realizing their human rights, United Nations experts said today, as the Commission on Population and Development launched its forty-seventh session.
Gender equality and women’s empowerment must be achieved in order to realize the unfinished business of the Millennium Development Goals and accelerate sustainable development beyond 2015, the Commission on the Status of Women declared today as it concluded its fifty-eighth session by recommending the adoption of agreed conclusions outlining the most pressing areas for action.
Too many women and girls were forced to drop out of school, to toil in precarious jobs or to give up control over their own bodies, especially when harmful practices were carried out in unsafe and unhygienic conditions, sometimes in the name of culture, representatives of non-governmental groups told the Commission on the Status of Women today.
The importance of inspiring young girls to not only study, but to take up careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics was the focus of two panel discussions in today’s meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women.
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.
