Despite information and communication technology playing such a key role throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN chief said that half the world remains offline, in his message marking International Girls in ICT Day, on Thursday – most of whom are women and girls in developing countries.
Achieving equal rights for women is “the unfinished human rights struggle of this century”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in remarks to the Generation Equality Forum which began online from Mexico City on Monday.
At the closing of the UN women’s commission, world leaders issued a strong pledge for the elimination of violence against women along with their full and effective participation in public life, including in decision-making.
Praising women’s fundamental contributions to peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts, the UN peacekeeping chief reiterated on Thursday that empowering women in the military remains a top priority, but to achieve this goal needs “all hands on deck”.
Ending violence against women in politics is critical to encouraging more women to participate in public life, the President of the UN General Assembly said on Tuesday.
Confronting major setbacks due to the coronavirus pandemic, countries in Asia and the Pacific “must now seize the moment” to rebuild and recover better together, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General said on Tuesday.
The UN rights chief said on Tuesday that empowering women and girls to participate fully in public life is both the right and “smart thing to do”, speaking on a day that saw history being made with the first ever address to the UN by a woman Vice President of the United States.
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on women and girls, and the fallout has shown how deeply gender inequality remains embedded in the world’s political, social and economic systems, UN chief António Guterres said in his address to the Commission on the Status of Women, on Monday. This year’s Commission will focus on charting a global roadmap towards achieving full equality in public life but, as Mr. Guterres recalled in his speech, gender equality in all walks of life is a long way off and has been further undermined by the pandemic.
Exclusion of women in decisions that affect their lives is “bad governance [and] should not be allowed”, the UN Women chief said on Monday, International Women’s Day.
Underscoring the transformative power of women’s equal participation, top United Nations officials called on all stakeholders to take special measures to advance their equal participation and achieve rapid change.
