Pressure is mounting for gender equality — Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Introductory Statement by UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngucka at the Economic Commission for Europe’s Beijing+20 Regional Review Meeting, on 6 November 2014 in Geneva.Date:
[Check against delivery]
Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, Mr. Christian Friis Bach,
Honourable ministers,
Distinguished delegates,
Colleagues and friends,
I am delighted to be here with you today at this, the first of the reviews by the five regional commissions of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
The outcome of this meeting will set the pace and the level for the reviews that follow by the other regional commissions, in a process that will culminate in March 2015 at the Commission on the Status of Women.
No pressure!
This is our chance to take a really frank look at progress.
We need to be absolutely clear-sighted about where change is still not happening, or is not happening fast enough. And we need to be prepared to agree and act on what will remedy this.
We have now received a record total of 158 national reports on implementation. This information, together with the Economic Commission for Europe’s (ECE) own analysis, gives us a clear picture of common factors of success and the challenges remaining.
I also urge you to build into your discussions the outcome of the NGO forum that concluded yesterday. Civil society is one of our greatest allies — and a constant, vigorous challenge to the status quo.
Mr. Executive Secretary,
I must recognize and thank the Economic Commission for Europe as a crucial partner for UN Women in realizing gender equality, the empowerment of women, and the human rights of all women and girls.
I commend the many important gains that countries in this region have made. This is where we can find best practices to share.
In the just-released World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2014, Northern European countries dominate the top 10 in improving equality for women in the workplace.
But globally — shockingly — the gender gap for economic participation and opportunity has closed by just 4 percentage points since 2006. On our current trajectory it will take another 81 years to reach equality. This is a wake-up call. Even where we are doing best, progress remains uneven; and discrimination against women continues in law and in practice in ECE countries:
- Women still face the main burden of unpaid care work.
- The gender pay gap persists.
- Many countries are still far from equal representation in board rooms and management positions.
- Crucially, women’s representation in parliaments remains low. In some ECE countries, the ratio of women to men is as low as one in ten.
- Violence against women remains a pandemic: One out of three women experiences either intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in her lifetime.
- And women from marginalized groups experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and inequalities.
Fifteen years ago at the Beijing +5 Review, we set the year 2005 as the target date for the revocation of laws that discriminate against women. Almost 10 years later, we still have not reached this objective. We are in fact witnessing a rise of conservatism and a pushback on gender equality and women’s empowerment in some places.
As the ECE’s report, prepared for this conference, highlights:
- We need to strengthen gender machineries
- Increase their influence in policy decisions;
- Increase their political and financial support at the highest level;
- Increase their access to key policy and decision-making processes; and
- Increase their human and financial resources.
All over, budgets are unrealistically low:
- In 13 countries, government spending through national women’s machineries was less than 0.4 per cent of GDP.
- Spending levels have either remained flat or fallen as a percentage of GDP since the financial crisis.
This is truly a critical moment in the struggle for gender equality — and we must seize that moment and make it ours. That is going to take unprecedented resolve and commitment of resources.
In crucial areas of development cooperation, especially economic empowerment and peace and security, women benefit from only a small fraction of the investments. The total volume of Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members’ aid commitments targeting gender equality and women’s empowerment has tripled in the last decade to USD 24 billion in 2012.
But only 2 per cent of development assistance programmes in the area of economic empowerment directly target women.
In the area of peace and security, only 3 per cent of the resources are geared towards protecting women’s human rights and enhancing their participation in peace processes.
I hardly need remind you of the multiple areas — Iraq, northern Nigeria, Syria and Somalia, to name a few — where violent extremists are taking control of territory, and directly threatening and targeting women, girls and their communities.
Next year — 2015 — marks 15 years since the passage of the landmark Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security.
Ladies and gentlemen, in this and in all the areas covered by the Beijing Platform for Action, we already have a robust normative framework in place, including the almost-universally ratified Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
This agenda now needs to be treated with political urgency and to be adequately financed.
Our first and most pressing global deadline is next year: 2015.
Concurrent with our work on shaping action to vastly accelerate the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, Member States are moving into the final stage of crafting the post-2015 development framework.
It is vital that in your regional and global development cooperation, you remain vigilant in this process, to maintain a strong gender goal, as well as the targets and indicators on gender equality across other goals, and carry forward the same messages and the same commitments.
The expiry date for gender inequality has been set — at 2030.
We must start hard and fast, frontloading action in the first five years, from 2015 to 2020.
This is my call to you today — to resolve to take urgent and sustained action to accelerate implementation.
I ask you to demonstrate strong leadership and commitment to advance women’s rights and counter conservative agendas that are inimical to women’s rights.
I ask you to reach out to the most marginalized women and girls and tackle stark and rising inequalities, and multiple forms of discrimination.
I ask of men to step up your contributions as gender equality advocates.
And I ask you to rearrange your national and international priorities, and exponentially increase investments in gender equality and women’s rights.
Let me remind you of Australia’s inspiring commitment to empowering women and girls as a central objective of its aid programme.
The Government has set a target requiring that at least 80 per cent of investments, regardless of their objectives, will effectively address gender issues in their implementation.
Distinguished delegates,
Everywhere I go, and with everyone I meet — from women and girls in markets and schools, to leaders of governments and CEOs of businesses — I feel a sense of urgency.
As 2015 approaches, the work streams on gender equality, climate change, a new development agenda, and women and peace and security are converging. Pressure is intensifying for world leaders to deliver on decades of promises and commitments to gender equality.
Everyone has a responsibility to act, but Member States must lead by example, and reach out to others for stronger partnerships that deliver results.
At the national, regional and global levels we must ignite a movement that is big and broad enough to achieve gender equality, and ensure women’s and girls’ human rights.
As the first of the regional reviews, it is up to you now to kick start this process.
It is you, in this room, who will build the momentum that will carry to the other regions, to the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2015, to the Global Leaders’ Commitment Forum in September, and to surge exponentially outwards until we have reached our goal.
Let me leave you with a quote from the Beijing Declaration:
“We dedicate ourselves unreservedly to addressing these constraints and obstacles and thus enhancing further the advancement and empowerment of women all over the world, and agree that this requires urgent action in the spirit of determination, hope, cooperation and solidarity, now and to carry us forward.”
Ladies and gentlemen, we do indeed require urgent action.
I wish you all a very fruitful meeting.
Thank you.