Speech: A gender-equal world is within our reach if we choose it

Remarks delivered by UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the side event, “Beijing+30: Achieving gender equality, the rights and empowerment of all women and girls”, Summit of the Future, Action Day 2, 21 September 2024, UN headquarters.

[As delivered.]

Excellencies, colleagues, fellow feminists, friends,

Next year we commemorate thirty years since the world convened to craft a historic agreement that had no less a vision than to build a world where every woman and girl would live free from discrimination, from violence, and from inequality. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action remains the most visionary roadmap for advancing gender equality, empowerment, and the rights of all women and girls, everywhere. It has inspired so many to do so much.

I pay tribute here to the women peacebuilders in Sudan, the Sahel, and everywhere. To the activists across the Americas who have championed the cause of a caring economy and a caring society. To the women in Gaza who are living the unimaginable daily in a war that must end. To the women fighting for their voices to be heard in Afghanistan. To the adolescent girls forging new pathways as innovators of digital technology. To the women and girl climate activists fighting for a planet on fire. To women’s human rights defenders the world over. Heroes all or, as some would say, sheroes all.

We see you, every one. Your work, your energy, and journey for justice, whilst long, is making a difference. And we thank you all.

Today we celebrate the progress we have seen since 1995. Lower overall poverty rates for women, finally. Great progress in education. Positive legal reforms that promote women’s rights across numerous countries, changing lives for the better.

However, let this progress not blind us to reality. The progress is too little, too slow. While the tireless activists for equality have done their job, the rest of the world has not. And so, we find ourselves racing against time.

Our latest SDG Snapshot Report tells us that, without acceleration, a girl born today will be 39 years old before women hold as many seats in parliament as men, she will be 68 before child marriage ends, and she will be 137 before extreme poverty for women and girls is eradicated. Last year, 612 million women and girls lived amidst the brutal realities of armed conflict, with a shocking 50-per-cent increase in conflict-related sexual violence perpetrated against them.

Excellencies, colleagues, friends,

We launch today a year of action to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. We contend that commemoration must be judged by acceleration and by positive change in the lives of women and girls everywhere. To achieve this, we will work with Member States and other stakeholders to advance high-impact, high-return-on-investment priority actions at country level, harvested from the insights of your progress reports for Beijing+30 and what we know works and works fast.

This is about focus. So, we propose six priority drivers for gender equality and the SDGs more broadly:

• First, national action plans to end violence against women and girls;
• Second, securing women’s leadership through temporary special measures;
• Third, unlocking finance to support the care economy and to reduce women’s unpaid care work;
• Fourth, bridging the gender digital gap;
• Fifth, linking economic empowerment to climate action and transitions to green and blue economies; and
• Sixth, ensuring accountability to the women, peace, security, and humanitarian action agendas.

And across all: ensuring that girls and young women and young people are seen, uplifted, and heard.

We will also work with civil society, in particular women’s and youth organizations, to ensure they have the strategic pathways and resources they need, in the broadest sense, to claim rights and influence action.

And we will work within the multilateral system to recommit to SDG 5 acceleration through the Beijing+30 review, including through the Secretary-General’s Gender Equality Acceleration Plan, so that it better delivers on gender equality and a unified position on women’s rights, especially needed in the current context of pushback and regression. Together, we will ensure that the multilateral system is a force for real change in the lives of women and girls at the country, regional, and global levels.

Excellencies, dear friends, dear feminists, everyone in this room,

We convene today on the eve of the Summit of the Future, where the world is recommitting to reinvigorated multilateralism and recognizing women’s rights’ rightful place at the heart of it. That timing is opportune, and over the coming months you will see our advocacy, our communications, our engagement with all partners, to ensure that we collectively do justice to the legacy and the vision of the Beijing Platform for Action.

Dear friends,

We can and must make the choice to collectively leverage this moment. We can and must galvanize the political will, commitment, and resources needed to get back on track. We can and must fulfil the promise of the Beijing Platform for Action and the SDGs. A gender-equal world is within our reach if we choose it. We owe it to women and girls and to everyone, to our children and theirs, to delay no further and to build a future where women and girls everywhere thrive.

Most welcome and thank you.