“Step it up” for a gender-equal world, urges UN Women chief

Heads of State and Government have pledged to crack some of the barriers to closing the gender equality gaps in their countries. UN Women, the UN agency which focuses on gender issues, has urged world leaders to “Step it up” so that women and men, boys and girls, have equal rights by 2030. UN Women calls the aspiration towards gender equality “Planet 50-50.” Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka explained to Jocelyne Sambira what this means.

Refugees need access to legal systems to move forward

Refugees from Syria and other areas of conflict need better access to legal systems to move forward with their lives, according to an activist from Jordan. There are over a half million Syrian refugees in the country alone, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Samar Muhareb is co-founder and Director of ARDD-Legal Aid, a NGO that litigates and advocates for human rights. She was recently at UN headquarters in New York to discuss a new approach to providing resources to women’s civil society organizations working in conflict prevention. She spoke to Janie Cangelosi about the issues facing refugees in the current crisis.

Japan needs to do more on “comfort women” deal with South Korea

Japan’s agreement to settle a long-standing dispute with South Korea concerning wartime sex slaves needs to do more for the victims, a UN rights panel said Monday. Independent rights expert Ismat Jahan, who sits on the UN women’s rights committee known by its acronym CEDAW, said that the “rights, demands and views” of so-called “comfort women” who were used by the Japanese military in the Second World War need to be heard. The recommendation is among those made by the UN committee which examines regular reports submitted by state signatories to the convention against discrimination against women, as Jahan told Daniel Johnson.

Presenter: Dianne Penn

Production Assistant: Sandra Guy

Duration: 10’00″