Statement of Estonia

Estonia invests both domestically and globally in achieving gender equality. At home, we have adopted national action plans and development strategies aimed at tackling issues such as stereotyping, violence and inaccessible victim-support services. Mrs. Kaljulaid, our newly elected President, is hopefully a testament to the fact that Estonians can reach the highest ranks regardless of their gender. However, we continue to encourage women’s participation in all spheres of society, governance and industry. In the military, for example, where the majority of participants are male, we hope to triple the number of females in the next two years. Internationally, we remain committed to promoting the potential of information and communications technologies (ICT) and innovation for helping to protect women’s and girls’ rights. ICT can give access to voting and education, detect and collect data, offer victim-support services, and function as a platform for free speech and global communication. The list goes on. We must establish more ICT mechanisms with that goal in mind. In that regard, I would like to commend UN-Women for collaborating with us in the area of ICT, as well as for incorporating technology into their own programmes and supporting a number of related measures. That brings me to the subject of collaboration. While intergovernmental cooperation is extremely significant, everyone should be heard from, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society have the ability to provide new insights and data that might otherwise be missed. There can be no doubt that that helps our joint efforts to ensure that every detail is accounted for and that no one is left behind. I would therefore like to stress that representatives of civil society and NGOs should be given larger platforms and more access to United Nations meetings and conferences.