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RESOLUTION 1325
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Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette
on International Women’s Day
7 March 2003, New York
I am delighted to be with you on International Women’s Day, and
happy to see such a distinguished and committed group of people of
both genders to the
United Nations for this event. Let me thank Angela King and
the United Nations inter-agency team for making it possible.
Every year, as we observe this Day, we seek to remind the international
community that the work to achieve gender equality is not the responsibility
of women
alone -- it is the responsibility of all.
Today, we are also here to emphasize that the way we meet that challenge
will not only shape the future of womankind -- it will determine the
future of
humankind.
It will determine our success in meeting the Millennium Development
Goals -- our common blueprint for building a better world in the twenty-first
century.
These eight Goals are drawn from the Millennium Declaration, which
as you know was endorsed by all Member States of the United Nations.
They express a set
of specific, targeted and time-bound commitments, including the promotion
of gender equality and the empowerment of women. They are simple
but powerful and
measurable objectives that every woman and man in the street, from
New York to Nairobi to New Delhi, can easily understand.
In our work to reach them, as the Millennium Declaration made clear,
gender equality is not only a goal in its own right; it is critical
to our ability to reach all the
others.
Study after study has shown that there is no effective development
strategy in which women do not play a central role. When women
are fully involved, the
benefits can be seen immediately: families are healthier and
better fed; their income, savings and reinvestment go up. And
what is true of families is also true of
communities and, in the long run, of whole countries.
That means that all our work for development -- from agriculture to
health, from environmental protection to water resource management
-- must focus on the
needs and priorities of women.
We must focus on the education of girls, who form the majority of
the children worldwide who are not in school. We must focus
on bringing literacy to the half
billion adult women who cannot read or write -- and who make up two
thirds of the world’s adult illiterates.
And we must place women at the centre of our fight against HIV/AIDS.
Women now account for 50 per cent of those infected with HIV worldwide.
In Africa, that
figure is now 58 per cent. We must make sure that women and
girls have all the skills, services and self-confidence they need
to protect themselves against the virus.
Across all levels of society, we need to see a deep social revolution
that transforms relationships between women and men, so that women
will be able to take
greater control of their lives -- financially as well as physically.
When women thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations
are given a better start in life.
We have known that in theory for a long time. For far too long,
we have failed to act on it.
There is no time to lose if we are to reach the Millennium Development
Goals by the target date of 2015. Only by investing in the world’s
women can we expect to
get there.
Today, let us pledge that we will act on that understanding -- not
only on International Women’s Day, but every day, until we reach
our objectives.
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