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Women play vital role in tackling global challenges, says Migiro

Women play vital role in tackling global challenges, says Migiro

Women are disproportionately impacted by global challenges yet are uniquely prepared to find solutions to them, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said in Brussels today.

“Women, who know the price of threats to human security so well, are also often better equipped than men to prevent or resolve them,” she said in an address to a European Union Commission conference entitled “Women: Stabilizing an Insecure World.”

Equality between men and women is the ultimate tool with which to tackle issues worldwide, the Deputy Secretary-General said.

“So long as women are not fully empowered, so long as we do not have true gender equality, women will always be more vulnerable to the next new challenge our globalizing world throws at us.”

The meeting brought together dozens of women leaders – including heads of State, ministers, heads of international organizations, business leaders and civil society activists – to confer on the twin themes of security and women’s empowerment.

Ms. Migiro pointed out that poor women contribute least to but are most affected by climate change, and urged scaled-up investments to curb food shortages and vulnerability to natural disasters.

Religious extremism and intolerance also “indisputably takes its most devastating role on women,” she declared, with extremism curbing women’s human rights.

Today’s meeting, which took place ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, was also attended by Karen Koning AbuZayd, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); Joanne Sandler, Executive Director of UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP); and Mari Simonen, Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).