Today,
March 8, was International Women’s Day, celebrated with a very special invitation at the
United Nations, in NYC, for men and boys to hold up one half of the sky and walk
side by side with women on the path to equal rights.
Why?
Because: equality for women is progress
for all
This
is the message that was reported and substantiated in a UN panel session convened on the occasion
of International Women’s Day 2014, and it is the new foundation upon which the
UN will devise a second set of development goals to end world poverty, once the UN
Millennium Development Goals of the year 2000 expire at the end of this year.
Indeed,
it was an extraordinary victory for women worldwide that equality and the empowerment
of women was included as Goal No. 3 in the UN Millennium Development Goals of
the year 2000, considering that 188 nations ratified recognition of the role of
women in economic development beyond childbearing.
And it should be even more interesting and extraordinary to see how good men
and boys will respond to an explicit HE for SHE program in support of equal
rights for women for the purposes of fostering development for all.
Please
feel free to listen to this important invitation in the speeches of H.E. Mr. John
W. Ashe, President of the United Nations General Assembly, and Ms. Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuke, Under Secretary and Executive Director of UN Women, directly at
the UN Women Watch site: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/iwd/
You will also find in this webcast of the event plenty of additional data and information in the speeches of the other 3 members of this distinguished 2014 International Woman’s Day UN panel, including:
H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, who kept a promise to tell the world about female genital mutilations, and to speak in support of women activists seeking to put an end such practices;
Former US Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who called for Women Rights as Human Rights, 20 years ago; and
Ms. Andrea Nunez, Vice President of the World YWCA Board, representing young women and civil society, working in the field to end child marriages and violence against women, and to support equal rights for women.
References
International Women’s Day at the UN (March 8, 2014) https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/iwd/
UN Millennium goals
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
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