US Citizenship Articles

JOINT ANNOUNCEMENT BY PGA AND SG on the occasion of the INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

It happpened! FAWCO is pleased to announce that The UN in New York made an announcement on 8 March for the 5th World Conference on Women 2015! Congratulations to all who have been working towards this goal, our hard work has paid off. It is cause to celebrate and a wonderful way to finish International Women's Day 2012. This will be a new beginning for women of the world.

The President of the UN General Assembly, H.E. Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser and the Secretary-General of the United Nations H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon would like to jointly propose the convening of a Global Conference on Women by the United Nations in 2015, twenty years after the last women’s summit in Beijing.

Given that women compose the half of humanity and the inherent importance and relevance of women issues for the global progress, it is high time that such a world conference is convened, more so as the world is going through enormous changes in all fronts having both positive and other implications for women.

The President of the General Assembly and the Secretary-General hope that the international community in general would welcome this joint initiative. They also hope that the Member-States who have the final authority to convene the proposed conference would take the necessary step in that regard during the on-going 66^th session of the General Assembly.

They believe that high pointthat the UN reached with the establishment of UN-Women in 2011 can be meaningfully substantiated with a global programme focusing on women and articulated at the Fifth Conference.

The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing which adopted in 1995 the current Forward-Looking Platform of Action was preceded by three such world conferences beginning in 1975 in Mexico City, in 1980 in Copenhagen and in 1985 in Nairobi, held in intervals of five years. The enthusiasm of civil society, particularly women’s organizations, for such a conference has added extra strength to the general support expected for the proposal.

The Assembly President and the Secretary-General believe that a world conference on women would do justice in looking closely not only at the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action but also at the emerging issues, in particular  those relating to women and political participation, UNSCR 1325 related  issues on women and peace & security, equal access to decent work and to decision-making, involvement of rural women and girls as well as aid effectiveness, food security, trafficking, drugs, migration, environment, climate change, information technology  which impact on women in various ways  at all levels. As a result, naturally these have implications for nations and societies as a whole. With their manifested complexities, all those areas need to be addressed in a holistic manner, benefitting from ever-widening potentials of global connectivity.

In all these, role and involvement of the young people, particularly women, would bring in an important dimension of intergenerational empowerment that did not get a deserving prominence in earlier conferences.