Remarks by H.E. Mr. Mher Margaryan, Permanent Representative of Armenia Chair, Commission on the Status of Women at the 2019 ECOSOC Integration Segment

08 July, 2019

2019 ECOSOC Integration Segment
Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality

Remarks by H.E. Mr. Mher Margaryan, Permanent Representative of Armenia
Chair, Commission on the Status of Women

What are the most pressing challenges to ensuring prosperous and peaceful societies and what must be done to overcome them?

Thank you, Madame Moderator.

Eradicating poverty and reducing inequality:

The pace of poverty reduction has been slowing down. Recent data analysis carried out by UN-Women and the World Bank shows that, globally, women are about 4 per cent more likely to live in extreme poverty than men.
Women in the peak productive and prime reproductive years – between 25 and 34 years old – are much more likely to be poor than men in the same age group. The responsibility for ‘reconciling’ production and reproduction falls disproportionately on women’s shoulders. For many, this implies either leaving their children unattended or sacrificing an income that could lift them and their children out of poverty.
What is urgently needed is a supportive policy framework that enables women and men to care for their families, without being condemned to poverty. This includes gender-responsive social protection systems and affordable childcare services.

Making climate action gender-responsive

Climate change disproportionately impacts women and girls. Throughout the developing world, women’s and girls’ livelihoods rely heavily on natural resources that are already being compromised by climate impacts. This places women and girls at increased risk of negative health impacts and loss of livelihoods and property.
Existing gender inequalities limit women’s and girls’ access to and control over resources, including finance, technology and land. Addressing these inequalities is a prerequisite for ensuring that climate policies and programs are gender-responsive, effective and sustainable across all sectors.
Lack of timely and sex-disaggregated data undermines the ability to effectively address the differentiated impacts of climate. Such data and gender impact analyses need to be integrated into reporting requirements on the implementation of climate change and disaster risk reduction policies to inform, monitor and evaluate policies and programs.

Preventing conflict, sustaining peace:

Women’s contributions and roles in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and sustaining peace are often under-valued.
Peace and security efforts are more sustainable when women are equal partners in the prevention of conflicts. Ensuring solid and meaningful participation of women in conflict resolution processes is instrumental, as it has proven to amplify the chances of credible and sustainable peace. Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the UN Security Council resolution 1325. The implementation of the commitments towards the promotion of the Women, Peace and Security agenda need to be supported.
Civil society organizations particularly led by women can play an important role in peace building efforts. For example in my country, the spouse of the Prime Minister of Armenia is leading an initiative called “Women for Peace” which serves as an inclusive platform for women and mothers to promote peace and reconciliation in the region and beyond.
Limited or collapsed infrastructure and services, lack of affordable public transportation, and challenges in accessing water and fuel during and after conflicts restricts women and girls from other activities, such as education and leisure, or from earning a livelihood.

What can the UN system, including the ECOSOC system, do?
The UN system should tackle pressing issues, identify policy approaches that work, and agree on steps to be taken to ensure implementation.

It is equally important to continue to refine, strengthen and deepen commitments. As an example, in 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action addressed elements of social protection for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Since then, these have been significantly expanded in the light of current circumstances, experiences, and lessons learned. CSW63 made critical connections between social protection, gender equality and humanitarian situations – if all States act on and implement these, we would make significant steps towards more prosperous and peaceful societies.

Functional commissions of ECOSOC should provide opportunities to review and evaluate progress in the implementation of commitments. CSW for example uses voluntary presentations by Member States to evaluate progress in implementation of its agreed conclusions from prior years, through consideration of its review themes. This is a critical aspect of accountability in the intergovernmental context that we need to continue to improve and evolve.

How can the coordination and effectiveness of the UN system and ECOSOC subsidiary bodies be improved in this area?

The UN system and ECOSOC subsidiary bodies should capitalize on their comparative advantages, but also share responsibility for achieving results.

As the principal policy-making body of the United Nations for gender equality and the empowerment of women, CSW also contributes to the follow-up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development so as to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. It is essential that the directive for “the systematic mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the implementation of the Agenda” (paragraph 20 of the 2030 Agenda) is taken on board fully and consistently by all bodies of the ECOSOC system. We all have a responsibility to accelerate the realization of gender equality.

CSW also exercises a catalytic role in support of gender mainstreaming in all areas of work of the United Nations. In this regard, the Commission reaches out to other functional commissions in an effort to support their work from a gender perspective; and is always interested in hearing from others about their approach.

I conclude by stressing the importance of financing for gender equality. We live in a world where resources are often unfairly distributed and do not reach those who need them the most. Less resources are available for gender equality. For women and girls in particular, essential services such as health, education, water, childcare, shelters for violence survivors remain underfunded or simply unavailable. The Commission on the Status of Women has therefore called for increasing investments to close resource gaps for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.

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