122. While the status of women has advanced in some important respects in the past decade, progress has been uneven, inequalities between men and women have persisted and major obstacles remain to women's empowerment, with serious consequences for the well-being of all people.
123. The Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women are important contributions to the advancement of women worldwide and must be translated into effective action by all States, the United Nations system and other organizations concerned as well as non-governmental organizations.
124. Empowering women is essential for achieving the goals of sustainable development centred on human beings. It requires appropriate public policies to ensure that women enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms and participate fully and equally in all spheres of public life, including in decision-making. Public policies to promote women's economic potential and independence and their full and equal participation in development are also essential for women's empowerment. Before decisions are taken in the areas of social and economic development and of the environment, an analysis should be made of their impact on women and men respectively.
125. Measures should be taken to ensure the full enjoyment by women and the girl child of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. Actions to be taken by States in this regard include fulfilling their commitments regarding the ratification of, accession to and the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women so that universal ratification of the Convention can be achieved by the year 2000, and avoiding as far as possible resorting to reservations. Measures should also be taken to ensure women's full and equal access to economic resources and social services through full respect for their human rights and fundamental freedoms.
126. Measures are needed to ensure women's equal access to education and to training and retraining. The targets set by the Fourth World Conference on Women for achieving gender equality in primary and secondary education should be implemented. Measures should be taken to ensure women's equal rights with men, equal access to economic resources and social services, including, inter alia, land, credit, science and technology, vocational training, information, communication, markets, education, and the right to inheritance. Eliminating occupational segregation and wage inequality, creating a flexible work environment that facilitates the restructuring of work patterns and the sharing of family responsibilities, are also major goals. Methods should be developed for assessing the value of unremunerated work outside national accounts. Policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women living in poverty should be reviewed, adopted or maintained in line with the recommendations of the Beijing Platform for Action.
127. Measures are also needed to achieve women's full participation in decision-making processes in all walks of life and at all levels. The success of policies and measures aimed at supporting or strengthening the promotion of gender equality and the improvement of the status of women should be based on the integration of the gender perspective in general policies relating to all spheres of society as well as the implementation of positive measures with adequate institutional and financial support at all levels. Enhanced participation by women will also contribute to ensuring that all policies and programmes are designed, implemented and monitored in full awareness of their possible or actual gender-specific effects.
128. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action should be urgently implemented in its entirety. Adequate mobilization of resources at the national and international levels, as well as new and additional resources to developing countries from all available funding mechanisms to strengthen the advancement of women, are required. The implementation of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women _ aimed at achieving equality by the year 2000 _ should be accelerated. Also called for is implementation of the relevant sections of Agenda 21 and of the Programmes of Action adopted by the International Conference on Population and Development and by the World Summit for Social Development, as well as of the Geneva Declaration on the Economic Advancement of Rural Women and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights.