UN chief calls for realizing aspirations on women empowerment
Source: News Ghana
High-level experts and policymakers have issued a clarion call to African leaders to ensure the needs and perspectives of the continent’s women and girls are fully integrated into efforts to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies.
Although in 1995 African women made their voices heard during the Beijing World Conference on Women, progress still fell short of commitments made as part of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, told a high-level meeting on gender equality and women’s empowerment on late Saturday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
“What I have learned since being a young boy is that power is not usually given. Power must be taken. As it is a question of power, parity in decision-making bodies is absolutely essential,” Guterres added.
Guterres said he was happy that since the first of January, the UN had for the first time in its history, achieved full gender parity in the high-level management of the organization.
“This represents a first step for full gender parity in 2028 at all levels of the UN, which remains our basic objectives,” he said, adding this year’s anniversaries of Beijing+25 and of the UN’s resolution 1325 on women “must push us further and faster towards progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment”.
The UN Chief further stressed that “it is sad that poverty in Africa, as in the rest of the world, still had a woman’s face with violence against women remaining pervasive.”
Click here to read the full article published by News Ghana on 9 February 2020.
High-level experts and policymakers have issued a clarion call to African leaders to ensure the needs and perspectives of the continent’s women and girls are fully integrated into efforts to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies.
Although in 1995 African women made their voices heard during the Beijing World Conference on Women, progress still fell short of commitments made as part of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, told a high-level meeting on gender equality and women’s empowerment on late Saturday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
“What I have learned since being a young boy is that power is not usually given. Power must be taken. As it is a question of power, parity in decision-making bodies is absolutely essential,” Guterres added.
Guterres said he was happy that since the first of January, the UN had for the first time in its history, achieved full gender parity in the high-level management of the organization.
“This represents a first step for full gender parity in 2028 at all levels of the UN, which remains our basic objectives,” he said, adding this year’s anniversaries of Beijing+25 and of the UN’s resolution 1325 on women “must push us further and faster towards progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment”.
The UN Chief further stressed that “it is sad that poverty in Africa, as in the rest of the world, still had a woman’s face with violence against women remaining pervasive.”
Click here to read the full article published by News Ghana on 9 February 2020.
