Create U.N. women's agency

United Nations: To mark the upcoming International Women's Day, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the General Assembly to pass a resolution that would create a U.N. agency to focus solely on the well-being of women.

In 2009, U.N. announced that four agencies would be amalgamated to create one single agency that would be dedicated for the welfare and equality of women.

“We hope soon to have a dynamic entity for gender equality and women's empowerment within the U.N. system. That would provide more coherent programming and a stronger voice for women,” said Mr. Ban.

“I urge the General Assembly to create this new entity without delay by adopting a resolution.”

This year's celebration on March 8 also marks the fifteenth anniversary of the landmark Beijing Declaration, which is the most comprehensive document adopted on women's right that obligated governments to provide equal opportunities to women in all fields.

Significant progress

The U.N. chief underlined that significant progress had been made since the Declaration with growing number of policies and legislation that support gender equality, reproductive health, employment and property rights.

Mr. Ban pointed out that more women were in government.

In West Asia, however, representation remains low, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which finds that women make up only 18.8 per cent of MPs worldwide, shy of the 20 per cent target set by the Beijing Declaration.

Despite the progress, Mr. Ban noted that “gross violations of human rights against women persisted everywhere. In its worst form it manifests as violence. Up to 70 per cent of women experience violence in their lifetime. Most commonly they are attacked by an intimate partner”.

“We sometimes hear it said that such practices are a matter of culture. They are not. They are abuses and they are criminal and they deny women's fundamental rights,” he added.

To mark International Women's Day, U.N. AIDS agency (UNAIDS) launched a new programme called ‘Agenda for Accelerated Country Action for Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV' that requires governments to address gender inequalities that put women and girls at risk to contract HIV.

Inequalities

“For too long, the inequalities that affect women and girls have made them more vulnerable to HIV. For too long, societies have been unable — or unwilling — to talk about these inequalities as drivers of the epidemic,” said Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro.

“For much too long, cohesive action to address these inequalities have been lacking,” she added. — PTI