The Nordiskt Forum – New Action on Women’s Rights

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First of all let me say thank you to theNordic Ministers and to Nordic civil society. This has been a very important anddynamic forum.

We all need to work together and stay strong for women’srights, women’s empowerment and gender equality. We need to push for women’sfull and equal participation in leadership, political representation anddecision-making.

Beijing+20 is our time to create high level politicalenergy and public attention to women’s and girls’ rights and gender equality andto make much greater progress. We cannot take for granted hard won gains. Thereis backlash and regression so we need to stay strong and expand our circles offriends and allies!

At UN Women our goals are to:

• generaterenewed political will and commitment,
• enhance social mobilization andawareness-raising,
• revitalize public debates,
• strengthen theevidence base, and
• increase action and funding!

UN Women standsready to support all the Member States to ensure that women and men are equalpartners and beneficiaries in sustainable development.

We are workingwith all partners in ongoing national, regional and global preparations forBeijing+20 culminating in the 59th session of the Commission on the Status ofWomen, in March 2015.

UN Women has made a strong case and will continueto push for addressing the structural barriers to gender equality as prioritiesfor the post-2015 development agenda.

We will continue to push forstrong goals and targets to address issues such as:

• women’sdisproportionate share of unpaid care work,
• violence against women andgirls,
• sexual and reproductive health and rights and
• women’s accessto productive resources.

We will continue to push for a gender datarevolution and increased investment in this important area.

We willcontinue to push for a transformative agenda that is rights-based and inclusiveto achieve equality for women and girls.

We will continue to push forstronger action to challenge the culture of acceptability and impunity arounddiscrimination and violence against women that we see in every region of theworld.

Promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment is a matter ofhuman rights.

The protection of women’s rights, including sexual andreproductive rights, is a fundamental condition for sustainable development, andpeace and justice.

The realization of women’s human rights is criticalto achieving progress in all 12 areas of concern of the Beijing Platform forAction.

The ability to have a voice and participate in decision-making inall spheres of life is essential to women’s and girls’ freedoms.

Wecannot allow the excuses of tradition, culture or religion to be used to trampleon the human rights of girls and women. And we can no longer allow the historicunder-investment in women and girls to continue.

This under-investmentis costing us in lives lost and human suffering. And it is costing us billionsand billions of dollars, euros and every other currency in lost productivity,lost opportunity, and lost prospects for peace, justice and sustainabledevelopment.

Violence against women alone is estimated to cost between1.5 and 2 per cent of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

We need tostep up financing for gender equality.

We need full financing toimplement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminationagainst Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action to achievestrong results for and with women and girls.
This Nordic Forum paves the wayforward. And I thank all of you, the Nordic governments and people for yourstrong support of UN Women, women’s rights and gender equality. Forward ever,backwards never!

Together we can make the 21st century the century toachieve equality between men and women.