Women and gender issues

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 sixteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women this morning elected by secret ballot 12 members of the 23-member body, which monitors compliance with the Treaty.

The Commission on the Status of Women concluded its fifty-fourth session today with the adoption of six resolutions on a range of issues concerning gender equality and women’s empowerment, and the approval of one text, by recorded vote, on Palestinian women, to be sent to the Economic and Social Council for adoption. The Commission also adopted the draft report of its current session, as well as the provisional agenda of its fifty-fifth session.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon today called on the international community to urgently join forces to end one of the most brutal and entrenched forms of gender discrimination ‑‑ violence against women, in an address to the Commission on the Status of Women’s fifty-fourth session.

Gender inequality and discrimination were key drivers of women’s and girl’s increased vulnerability to HIV infection, and while various global commitments had been made, national interventions had not been implemented on a scale that made a true difference in prevention, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today as it addressed health and related issues on its last day of high-level debate.

Addressing the Commission on the Status of Women’s fifty-fourth session this afternoon, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said the General Assembly’s proposal to create a United Nations body for gender issues was an historic opportunity to give women a stronger voice in global governance and policymaking.