[women-rights] Empowering women is key to development, Fréchette tells UN Commission

27 February 2006 -- Opening the 50th session of the United Nations
Commission on the Status of Women, UN Deputy-Secretary General Louise
Fréchette said today the international community is finally comprehending
that empowering women and girls around the globe is the most effective
tool for a country’s development.

Studies have repeatedly shown that by giving women equal education and
work opportunities and access to a society’s decision-making processes, a
country can boost its economic productivity, reduce infant and maternal
mortality rates and improve the general population’s nutrition and health,
Ms. Fréchette told representatives gathered during the first day of the
two-week meeting at UN headquarters in New York.

More than a decade after the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in
1995 in Beijing, the Commission will focus on two themes that it believes
are crucial to women’s progress around the world: their participation in
development and their role in decision-making in all areas of society,
from politics to business to media. More than 2,000 representatives of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were expected to attend the session.

“Ten years after the Beijing declaration, we still have far to go on
actual representation of women at the highest levels of national and
international leadership,” Ms. Fréchette said. “That includes the United
Nations itself, the Charter of which proclaims the equal rights of men and
women.”

The UN Charter was signed in San Francisco in 1945 and the Commission was
created the next year to promote the advancement of women around the
world.

Ms. Fréchette praised the Commission for its role over the past six
decades in shaping the progress of women at global and national levels
through such activities as developing legal measures, shaping new policies
and raising consciousness of how global trends from migration to HIV/AIDS
affect women.

Rachel N. Mayanja, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on
Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, said the Outcome Document hammered
out by global leaders at the 2005 World Summit as well as the UN’s ongoing
reform offer fresh opportunities to speed up the implementation of global
commitments to women.

“A fully implemented and engendered Summit Outcome will usher in a new era
for the empowerment and advancement of women,” said Ms. Mayanja, noting
that the Summit called for the increased representation of women in
Government decision-making bodies.

UN News Service



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