Message of the President of the General Assembly

Your Excellency, Mr. Antonio Manuel Revilla Lagdameo, Chair of the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women,

Mr. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations,

Ms. Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General,

Ms. Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women,

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to join you in observing this year’s International Women’s Day.

Allow me to express my sincere appreciation to UN Women for organizing this commemorative event. We meet today, united in our determination to accelerate the pace towards the creation, sooner rather than later, of a gender-equal world.

A world that sees men and women, girls, and boys, enjoying equal access to and benefits of education, at all levels.

A world in which it is an everyday occurrence for women to lead nations and institutions, corporate and public.

A world where gender-based violence is an issue of the past.

As we speak, it is disheartening that women and girls worldwide continue to face all forms of discrimination and abuse; and globally, one in three women have been subjected to violence, generally at the hands of an intimate partner.

I am deeply alarmed by reports of sexual abuse targeting women and girls in Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti and elsewhere, including the Reports of the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, which indicated that there is credible evidence of rape and sexualized torture committed against women and girls by Hamas during and following the October 7 attacks.

We simply must do much more to stop these atrocities, and, when proven on an evidentiary basis, to punish the perpetrators.

Unhappily, we continue to fall short on many indicators in the context of gender equality.

Gender discrimination and inequality hamper progress across the entirety of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

At the current rate of addressing global poverty, more than 340 million women and girls will still live in extreme poverty by 2030. This is both unimpressive and indeed unacceptable, to say the least.

Frankly speaking, it is not rocket science that when the contributions of women, who make up more than half of the world’s population are restricted, there is concurrent global reduction in growth and socio-economic development.

The message is inescapably clear: our collective well-being is intractably and intrinsically tied to our ability to unlock our fullest potential by empowering women and girls.

This is precisely why the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, which is, “Invest in women: accelerate progress”, is so appropriate.

It is a clarion call to action to invest in and to support women and girls and, in so doing, accelerate our collective progress.

This requires rethinking policy and doubling down on programming that benefits those most vulnerable.

It also means addressing the lingering – yet critical – issue of financing for development, which is askew and in short supply.

It is therefore imperative that we:

Invest in women-led businesses, closing the gender pay gap, and provide access to credit and financial services;

Support girls’ and women’s education and skills development in the context of lifelong learning;

Ensure access to reproductive healthcare, address gender-based violence, and promote mental health;

Cultivate a path to enable women to assume leadership roles;

Support women’s involvement in politics, and decision-making processes;

Challenge harmful gender stereotypes, promote gender-sensitive policies, and foster inclusive social norms;

Harness technology to advance gender equality, such as e-learning platforms and mobile health services; and

Build alliances between governments, civil society, businesses, and communities to achieve gender equality goals.

As President of the General Assembly – and a committed champion of gender equality, I have prioritized this issue during my tenure and intend to use this Day and the forthcoming session of the Commission on the Status of Women as platforms to highlight critical challenges facing women and girls and to encourage meaningful discussions that will propel us towards achieving gender equality.

Rest assured my commitment to this issue is substantive and extends beyond mere rhetoric to include tangible “change-making” actions.

At the beginning of my Presidency, I appointed Ambassador Keisha McGuire as Special Advisor on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

I also reconstituted the Advisory Board on Gender Equality, which aims to mainstream gender perspectives into the work of the General Assembly.

Further, in demonstrating our commitment to creating a safer and more inclusive work environment for all, we launched a training initiative for Permanent Missions in New York and Geneva in partnership with UN-Women and the President of the Human Rights Council aimed at preventing sexual harassment at the workplace.

Yesterday, a special edition of the PGA’s Gayap Dialogue was held in collaboration with the Permanent Mission of Iceland, adopting the Barbershop concept to engage male Permanent Representatives as agents of change in ongoing global efforts to advance gender equality. It was a most successful exercise.

Let me conclude by reassuring you that I will continue to use my role and influence, as President of the General Assembly, to advocate for the full enjoyment of the rights of women and girls.

Gender equality is not merely an ideal we should pursue at our leisure – it is an urgent moral imperative, that should have already been manifested.

With these sentiments in mind, let us seize every opportunity to accelerate progress by investing in our women and girls – so that we can usher in a truly equitable and just world, with women and men joining their respective strengths and powers for enhanced family and community success and indeed, for more expansive and transformative sustainable development.

Happy International Women’s Day!

I thank you.

Dennis Francis

UN Women Executive Director's message 2024

I will begin on this International Women’s Day with a moment of reflection for all the women and girls killed in wars and conflicts that are not of their making.

Wars and conflicts are eroding the achievements of decades of investments in gender equality and women’s empowerment. From the Middle East, to Haiti, to Sudan, Myanmar, the Sahel, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the world, women pay the biggest price of conflicts.

Conflict is inherently violent, but for women and girls ever more so, including in sexual and gender-based ways. This is intolerable. No woman or girl anywhere, ever, should experience sexual violence or any form of violence. UN Women, alongside everyone here, condemns it unequivocally.

The need for peace has never been more urgent. We salute women everywhere who strive to bring peace every day, who are human rights activists, who are human rights defenders, who lead and fight for change.

This year’s International Women’s Day sees a world hobbled by confrontation, fragmentation, fear, and, most of all, inequality.

Persistent poverty gaps continue to exist worldwide, and women bear an increasingly heavy burden. One in every ten women in the world lives in extreme poverty. Poverty has a female face.

Men own 105 trillion dollars [USD] more wealth than women. They dominate the corridors of power.

And the pushback against gender equality is well resourced and powerful, fuelled by anti-gender movements, de-democratization, restricted civic space, a breakdown of trust between people and state, and regressive policies and legislation.

We all feel this pushback acutely. Our values and principles have never been as challenged as they are today.

I thank all of you for lending your energies to this struggle, to the cause of women’s rights and gender equality, and I thank you all for joining us in pushing forward against the pushback.

This year’s International Women’s Day calls us all to invest in women and girls and to accelerate progress.

It is only by investing in women and girls that we will meet the challenges we face, be they economic-, conflict- or climate-related.

Investing in women and girls is indisputably the best pathway to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, to peace and security.

When more women are economically empowered, economies grow.

Where women are equally represented in government, governance thrives.

Where women are free to live their lives without the perpetual threat of violence, families flourish, and businesses benefit.

Where women have a bigger say in peace processes, peace is found sooner and is more durable.

But in spite of these clear facts, we continue to stubbornly invest in weapons more than we invest in women and girls.

We continue to say gender equality can be postponed for “later”, as we watch the world fall further off track, and even “later” is postponed.

In the coming months and year, we have a collective opportunity to recommit ourselves to gender equality. The Summit of the Future presents an opportunity to centrally place gender equality across discussions on development, financing, technology, and peace and security. The thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action next year has the potential to be a watershed moment for increased and accelerated action to make truth of the promises made 29 years ago. I welcome the Secretary-General’s announcement of the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan. Please count on UN Women as your partners in this.

The International Women’s Day this year has a call. And this call is clear and compelling. For every woman and girl, we ask that we finally make the best investment we can: financing gender equality and unlocking its dividends for all. More than 100 million women and girls could be lifted out of poverty if governments prioritized education, healthcare, fair and equal wages, and expanded social benefits. We know that when women raise their voices it is for equality, for their rights and for the rights of others, for peace and justice for all. They fight to leave a better world behind them for all the people and for our shared planet.

On International Women’s Day we elevate their voice. We elevate their cause, and our cause. We commit to affording it the resources it deserves and demands.

Allow me before I end to echo the call of the Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly, the Chair of the Commission on the Status of Women: We need a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza now. More than 9000 women have been killed in Gaza, and this must stop. We cannot return to a path to peace without justice for all survivors of this conflict—and I say all survivors of this conflict—and without an end to the indiscriminate violence in Gaza.

I began my remarks today with a moment of reflection. I end my remarks with a call for all of us to be the light that brings hope and that accelerates progress towards an equal, sustainable, and peaceful future. For all people. For every woman and for every girl, everywhere. I know that together, it is within our reach

Sima Bahous

UNESCO Director-General's message 2024

Gender equality is a simple idea. It is the conviction that women deserve the same rights, opportunities and knowledge as men. It is the belief that women have just as much to contribute to society – and to addressing societal issues. It is the commitment to breaking down barriers that have held women back for far too long.

Yet, for all its simplicity, gender equality is proving remarkably difficult to achieve. Today, no country in the world can claim to be gender equal. At our current pace, it will take almost 300 years for all countries to be able to do so. In the meantime, according to UNESCO data, artificial intelligence will claim more jobs from women than men by the end of this decade. The climate crisis will push an estimated 160 million women into poverty by 2050.

To break down the barriers facing women, UNESCO has made gender equality a global priority for its action. We acknowledge the invaluable contributions made by women scientists, artists, journalists, educators and athletes. We work to ensure all women and girls are given the opportunities they deserve. And, every year on 8 March, we mark International Women’s Day to raise awareness of these issues.

The theme of this year’s day is investing in women to accelerate progress. This means developing, financing and implementing transformative solutions to advance gender equality and sustainability in the face of cascading global concerns and crises. UNESCO does this, hand in hand with its partners, in all the areas of its mandate.

First, to better understand the negative impacts of gender discrimination on economies and societies, UNESCO has developed a Gender-Based Resilience Framework, “Empowering women for the good of society”. It underlines the importance of closing the gender gaps in labour, innovation and sport – but also in leadership and decision-making, in line with our new podcast being launched today: Leadership for Equality.

In the field of education, we empower women by teaching them the skills they need for greater economic and social autonomy – for example, through our flagship programme “Her education, our future”. This year, we are telling the story of four girls whose lives have been changed by this initiative in a documentary released on 7 March.

We are also committed to ensuring that women and girls can thrive in scientific fields – especially given that women only account for one third of all researchers, according to the UNESCO Science Report. In 2022, to break down barriers in STEM fields, we supported 5,550 women and girls through mentorships, role models and career development programmes. And, since 1998, through the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme, we have recognized more than 4,200 talented women scientists in over 140 countries around the world.

In the creative industries, too, UNESCO is working to create professional opportunities for women. For example, with the Walt Disney Company, we are partnering with Women in Animation and its 2024 “Stories x Women” programme to give up to a dozen women animators especially from Africa – a chance to pitch projects at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France.

Finally, UNESCO shines the spotlight on the difficult conditions facing women journalists – 73% of whom face online violence, according to our research – and is working with governments, judges, digital platforms and the media to create safer working conditions and fight online harassment.

Achieving women’s empowerment remains one of humankind’s greatest challenges and, at the same time, an immense opportunity to realize humankind’s full potential. This year on International Women’s Day, UNESCO calls for immediate action to bring about this paradigm shift – now.

Audrey Azoulay

UNDP Administrator's message

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, Invest in women: Accelerate progress is a timely reminder that sufficient, well-aligned public and private finance will ultimately determine whether people get food on their plates, jobs or access to education. While global wealth stands at nearly $500 trillion, there is a stark deficit in global finance that intentionally flows towards advancing gender equality -- one of the most powerful means to allow people to escape poverty. Yet an additional $360 billion per year is needed to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment across key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Indeed, it is estimated that over two-thirds of global wealth is held by developed countries. The real issue is where money is spent and by whom, and who benefits or not. Driving shifts in four key areas will be vital to reset the financial landscape and ensure that women can enjoy their rights.

First, it is vital to support countries throughout the entire cycle of public finance. Only by having the adequate fiscal space can poverty be eradicated. We need a just global tax regime and truly progressive tax systems that lower the tax burden of low-income communities who are usually poor women. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is providing specialized support to ministries of finance globally -- from re-thinking the way resources are mobilized through taxation to how budget programmes are conceived, implemented, and monitored. And UNDP’s EQUANOMICS initiative supports ministries of finance and tax authorities in 26 countries to make fiscal policies work for gender equality. It includes a Global Learning Lab, which aims to help economists and policymakers to re-think the future of work while equipping them with knowledge to steer the structural shifts we now need.

Second, the world should commit to restructuring the debt of developing countries urgently as part of wider reform of the international financial architecture, which is crucial to allow millions of women and men to escape poverty. We need a debt architecture fit for gender equality too. With dozens of developing countries impacted by the debt crisis, households are the ones absorbing the shock from cuts to social spending and public services, and women’s unpaid labour becomes an invisible subsidy.

Third, we need efficient, accountable, and transparent ministries of finance, central banks, and tax authorities. And we must address the fact that many initiatives that advance institutional reforms for gender equality are fragmented, limiting their impact. Indeed, if public financial institutions are not ready and equipped for change, they may not be able to undertake nor maintain such reforms. Comprehensive reforms require more than ad hoc training or segmented investments in parity. There is a need to work with the ecosystem of public institutions. Therefore, efforts like UNDP’s Gender Equality Seal for Public institutions are recognising ministries of finance, tax authorities and other institutions that are committed to gender equality while preparing them to advance gender-responsive fiscal reforms.

Finally, as our world faces its highest levels of violent conflicts since 1945, the lack of financial resources continues to be the most serious and persistent obstacle to implementing the global women, peace and security commitments over the past 15 years. Indeed, in contexts of crises and shocks, women are nearly eight times more likely to be poor compared to men. For this reason, UNDP is working as part of the UN family in countries across the globe -- from Afghanistan where UNDP has supported 75,000 women-owned businesses since 2021, leading to the creation of some 900,000 jobs; to working alongside women in Côte d’Ivoire as they rebuild their lives and earn an income following violence.

With key partners like UN Women, UNDP will continue to #InvestInWomen, breaking down barriers and bias and ensuring that women can lead. Women, their communities – and indeed our global community – cannot afford to wait.

Achim Steiner