Economic and Social Council

The Commission on the Status of Women wrapped up its general debate today amid calls from civil society groups to focus more substantively on protecting the women and girls whose rights were most often under-represented — or excluded — from the very international human rights instruments intended to protect them.

A sharp, deeply embedded distinction between the so-called “private” family sphere of women and the “public” market sphere of men — coupled with imbalanced caregiving responsibilities — threatened to hamper the development of both women and societies around the world, stressed panellists addressing the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women today.

Men had a crucial role to play — as fathers, brothers, husbands and public advocates — in both speaking out against violence against women and girls, and in defying the destructive stereotypes that served to normalize gender inequality, delegates stressed today, as the Commission on the Status of Women moved into week two of its fifty-seventh session.

Despite shrinking budgets and often-conservative political agendas, Governments throughout the world were making significant strides in expanding multisectoral approaches to eliminate violence against women, characterized by a range of integrated services to prevent abuse and support survivors, speakers said today as the Commission on the Status of Women continued its general debate.

Societies must be willing to examine the underlying causes of gender-based violence, the systems that facilitated it and the factors that exacerbated it, in particular, armed conflict, HIV/AIDS and poverty, senior Government officials stressed as the Commission on the Status of Women moved into the third day of its fifty-seventh annual session.

As the recent “horrific” abuse of women in India and around the world had laid bare, it was not a lack of normative or legal frameworks — but rather their effective implementation — that impeded efforts to combat such violence and end the culture of impunity that protected perpetrators, senior Government officials said today, as the Commission on the Status of Women moved into day two of its general debate.

With the scourge of violence against women and girls still rampant around the world, the international community must “rise to the occasion” and lay out concrete plans to tackle that long-standing, deeply entrenched crisis, stressed high-level speakers as the Commission on the Status of Women opened its historic fifty-seventh session today.

Calling for a universal response to the problem of violence against women and girls, Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN-Women said today that Governments were the key to ending the “pandemic” of violence targeting females worldwide.

The fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women opens on 4 March at United Nations Headquarters, and will focus on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls, including two key areas — preventing violence and providing support services and responses to female survivors.

Convening in a brief organizational session this afternoon, the Economic and Social Council decided on the division of responsibilities among its President, Néstor Osorio (Colombia), and four of its Vice-Presidents to Chair the various segments of its 2013 substantive session, to be held in July.