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In her opening statement to the First Regular Session of the Executive Board, UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous emphasized the urgency of achieving gender equality and highlighted the challenges that women and girls still face worldwide. SDG 5, which focuses on gender equality, is off track, putting the entire 2030 Agenda in jeopardy. At the current pace, gender equality is estimated to be achieved 300 years from now, which is unacceptable.
Bahous called for collective action to reject the betrayal of generations of girls who have been born into an unequal world due to our failures. She pointed out that the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign highlights the price women human rights activists pay for standing up against human rights violations. Members of the Executive Board who recently visited Ecuador heard directly about the scourge of femicide, as documented in UN Women’s global report on the subject.
At the session, UN Women looked in-depth at its operational response in Asia and the Pacific, particularly regarding the gender-related implications of the climate crisis, cyber security, and violent extremism. The challenges we face are both old and new, and we must evolve with them to address them effectively.
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67), with its priority theme of “Innovation and Technological Change and Education in the Digital Age for Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment of All Women and Girls,” will take place next month. Digitalization is rapidly transforming society, allowing for unprecedented advances to improve social, economic, and political outcomes for women and girls. However, it also gives rise to new challenges that may perpetuate and deepen existing patterns of gender inequalities.
Bahous stressed UN Women’s obligation to achieve the greatest possible impact with the resources entrusted to the organization, including effective governance, operational readiness, financial and human resources management, and transparency. She noted the Secretary-General’s independent review of the UN system’s capacity to deliver on gender equality across all pillars of the organization and welcomed the efforts made by the independent review team. The Review Report is now with the Secretary-General, and UN Women looks forward to a strengthened UN that recognizes its triple mandate and continues to place women and girls at its very heart.
The session included attention to audit matters, and UN Women received its eleventh consecutive “clean” audit opinion from the Board of Auditors on the financial statements. UN Women has also provided updates on the implementation of three specific decisions mandated for reporting at this session, including a report on the indicators and metric framework that will provide UN Women with information on progress achieved on addressing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment.
UN Women is fully committed to strengthening its organization further, increasing transparency, strengthening coordination, and focusing more on its program countries. Bahous called for continued engagement with the Executive Board to discuss how UN Women’s report aligns with the proposed “checklist” accountability tool to assess the implementation of the repositioning of the United Nations development system and stated that, “by working together, we can rise to the challenges of 2023 and create a world where women and girls can achieve their full potential.”
