Women and gender issues

Following are Secretary-General’s remarks at a special ceremony on receiving an Honorary Doctorate in women’s studies at Ewha University in Seoul today:

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at the high-level lunch on “Every woman, every child”, in New York today:

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

The Commission on the Status of Women had a revitalized role to play in ensuring the 2030 “expiry date” for gender inequality across the world, as laid out in the Political Declaration adopted last week, said the United Nations top gender official at the closing of its fifty-ninth session today.

Like the Millennium Development Goals, progress on gender mainstreaming remained uneven across a landscape of United Nations functional commissions and work remained to be done to galvanize meaningful change in the post-2015 era, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today during interactive discussions on the penultimate day of its two-week annual session.

All people — no matter who they are — must benefit from development and be given opportunities to contribute to its design, implementation and monitoring, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today, concluding its general debate and addressing the impact of discrimination on marginalized women and girls.

Gender-sensitive, disaggregated data must be an integral part of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda and no longer treated as an “afterthought”, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today as statistical experts took centre stage.

While some advances had been made for women, true change would require the participation of men and boys to challenge dynamics at the personal and professional levels, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment must be at the heart of efforts to address the world’s most critical emerging challenges, including climate change, delegates told the Commission on the Status of Women today.

Following are the closing remarks of UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, as prepared for delivery, at the Commission on the Status of Women Intergenerational Dialogue on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, held in New York today: