General Assembly

Fifteen years after ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Papua New Guinea was still struggling to change entrenched cultural attitudes and norms that kept women from attaining crucial government and political positions and contributed to high rates of violence against them, the country’s delegation told the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee today.

With amendments to the country’s Constitution, the enactment of a new Penal Code and the creation of the Committee on the Equal Rights and Opportunities within the Turkish Grand Assembly, Turkey had worked consistently over the last decade to improve the status of women, the Turkish delegation told the forty-sixth session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women today.

In today’s meeting of the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee, Australia heralded the notable strides it had made through advocacy, policy, legislation and national strategies to empower women, asserting that it rated well against international measures of success, but acknowledged, too, the remaining challenges, especially facing indigenous women and girls, in reducing violence against women, improving women’s economic security, and ensuring women’s equal place in society.

Despite a decade of significant social and economic changes and the 2009 global economic and financial crisis, the Russian Federation remained intent on using legislation, judicial reforms and increases in social benefit payments to improve women’s status, members of a well-represented Russian delegation told the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee today.

More than a year after the abrogation of its Constitution in April 2009, Fiji was working with a series of newly established decrees to ensure that the rights of women were protected as the South Pacific island nation shaped a new Constitution by 2012 before holding elections two years later, members of the Fiji Government delegation told the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women today.

Argentina, despite two economic crises in the past decade — one domestic and one global — and major political changes, had firmly rooted the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Convention in its national policies, governmental structures, educational and social programmes, and health initiatives, said its delegation today, reporting to the body that monitors compliance with that human rights treaty.

In an effort to raise awareness of the role women could play in maintaining peace and security around the world, the Chairperson of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women urged Committee members to use the forty-sixth session, opening today, to recognize the tenth anniversary of the Security Council’s landmark resolution on women, peace and security.

The United Nations African Meeting on the Question of Palestine closed today in Rabat, Morocco, with a call to the Security Council to act to prevent the further deterioration of conditions in East Jerusalem due to Israeli efforts to unilaterally change the character of the City.

“UN Women” would give women and girls the strong unified voice they deserve on the world stage, said United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro, ahead of an anticipated decision by the General Assembly to bring together four distinct parts of the United Nations system devoted to women’s issues into one composite entity.

As the United Nations African Meeting on the Question of Palestine opened today in Rabat, Morocco, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other participants stressed that resolving the status of Jerusalem was priority for peace in the Middle East, and that unilateral Israeli activity to change the facts on the ground there must cease.