Pakistan hosting record 4 side-events as UN Commission on Women’s Status opens

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (APP):Pakistan is set to organize a record four side-events dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women in the coming week as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) holds its annual session at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

“We will continue our diplomatic activism in CSW’s 63rd session,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, told APP ahead of one of the biggest assemblies of countries at the UN.

This is the second biggest event in UN General Assembly’s calendar, the Pakistani envoy said, and added that “ It is always a vibrant expression of solidarity for gender equality and women’s empowerment”

Over 9,000 delegates from around the globe are taking part in the conference, which is a record. They include representatives of member states, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions of the world.

The theme this year is : Social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

Pakistan’s one person delegation to the Commission will be led by Khawar Mumtaz, chairperson of the National Commission of Women.

The side-events Pakistan is holding with Turkey, Qatar, Iran, Indonesia, Canada and Gambia, among others, are aimed at providing a platform “to inform, learn and share”, Ambassador Lodhi said.

Other than the four events Pakistan is hosting, it is also participating in a fifth event as well

Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said CSW offers a unique opportunity to showcase Pakistan ‘s wide ranging domestic reform and female empowerment agenda, share best practices and to also learn from others.

Meanwhile, speaking at an event ahead of the CSW session, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “Gender equality is fundamentally a question of power”, adding that a still male-dominated world has “ignored, silenced and oppressed women for centuries – even millennia”.

Despite women’s achievements and successes, their voices are still routinely overlooked, and their opinions ignored, with everyone paying the price for inequality and oppression.

“Increasing the number of women decision-makers is essential”, Guterres remarked, adding that the UN has reached gender parity among its leaders around the world.

General Assembly President Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces regretted that nearly four decades after the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted and some 25 years after the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, “we are still not even close to equal”.

On pretty much any measure of development, women are behind, she said. “Every woman and girl knows that her lived reality is very different to that of her father or brother” Ms. Espinosa said, adding: These statistics are shocking”.

To boost the number and diversity of women in leadership positions, on 12 March she will convene a high-level event on “Women in Power”.

The Chairperson of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Geraldine Byrne Nason, recalled the early days of the UN, when “women were few and far between”.

“It took us quite some time for our voices to be heard and for our messages to register”, she stated, but today “we are sitting centre-stage and we have absolutely no plans to lower the volume”.

The event host and Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said that “we want women and girls themselves to be inspired to innovate and influence the whole ecosystem of innovation.”

“Women are not simply consumers of prescribed solutions, they also design solutions for whole societies and they are equipped to address the issues that affect their lives”, she told the group.

She said her equality and empowerment agency was “injecting the gender lens in the DNA of innovation” adding: “Women and girls have a vital role to play in the fourth industrial revolution, shaping the policies, services and infrastructures that affect their lives.”