We meet today against the backdrop of crisis. However, we are also convening in this hall, in person, for the first time in three years. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the existing global inequalities. It brought progress on women´s empowerment to a screeching halt. While we can remove our masks today, many parts of the world are still grappling with access to vaccines and adequate health care. Here too, gender inequalities in access to care are prevalent.
Inevitably, global conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic continue to greatly occupy our minds. They are a stark reminder of the interconnectedness of the global challenges we face. The war in Ukraine, between two wheat- and oil-producing nations, threatens food security and access to essential services the world over. This too, will impact women and girls the hardest.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to threaten progress on Agenda 2030. What is required today is not only solidarity and global solutions, but also renewed commitment.
This Commission’s Agreed Conclusions can set out a path for global resilience and recovery. This path must be guided by the Sustainable Development Goals; and be underpinned by gender equality and a commitment to multilateralism, diplomacy, peace and justice.
One of our greatest common challenges is climate change: the priority theme of this 66th Commission. The world is on fire. It impacts every corner of our globe, and threatens peace, food security and sustainable development from the Pacific to the Arctic. As with all crises, climate change also exacts its highest price from women and girls. Especially from those who are already being left behind: female-headed households; rural women; women who cannot access land; young girls who must walk further to fetch water in times of drought and missing school to do so; older women; women without access to finance -and the list goes on.
Member States have already made many important commitments to gender equality through multilateral environmental agreements such as the Rio conventions and the Sendai Framework. Now is the time to implement what has already been agreed and create gender action plans where there are gaps.
The Secretary-General’s priority theme report sets out clear recommendations, which I hope will be reflected in your Agreed Conclusions. The report is clear. Young people’s participation is necessary and key. Women´s participation and leadership are crucial to effect change. It is the only way to ensure a sustainable future. We must leverage women’s skills in managing the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Women and youth are taking climate and environment action everywhere. Young women are leading the global climate movement. Indigenous women have solutions from their lived experiences. We must listen; and we must act.
Currently, women’s and girls’ rights, priorities and needs are systematically overlooked by climate, environmental and disaster risk policies and programmes. For example, only a third of national energy frameworks from 137 countries include gender considerations.
We must take an all-of-government approach, intentionally bolstering the representation of women, including young women, in national parliaments, in national gender equality mechanisms, municipalities and institutions. Women in all their diversity must be part of decision-making spaces, meaningfully and without barriers. This inclusion, including through temporary special measures, is one concrete accelerated action you can take to advance gender equality and identify solutions to the global climate crisis.
We know with certainty that climate and environmental crises and disasters are escalating. When we foster and invest in women’s resilience, we are building the defences of the future as well as the assets of today. Resilience and empowerment go hand in hand.
Our ability to anticipate the next emergencies, prevent them to the extent possible, and manage them when they arise, depends on actively equipping women and girls and their organizations. Resources to do so, such as best practices in agroecology and agroforestry, already exist. They must be shared and scaled up, building on scientific, indigenous and ancestral knowledge.
We must expand decentralized sustainable energy solutions. We must support gender-responsive fisheries in the blue economy. Currently, less than 17 per cent of the water sector workforce is made up of women….