In view of the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which will take place in New York from 11 to 22 March 2024, No Peace Without Justice, as a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, submitted a statement addressing the priority theme “Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective“.
The document (UN protocol number E/CN.6/2024/NGO/71) stresses the importance of equal opportunities in the access to education and the labour market as essential factors in reducing structural poverty both among women and girls globally.First and foremost, it is necessary to link gender inequality and poverty, which affects a considerable part of women’s population. Second, institutional and financial support in education and the labour market are essential in reducing poverty among women and girls that are still attached to intra-family patterns that impede their self-development, economically, politically, and socially.
The submitted statement also offered specific recommendations to UN Member States to:
1) update and align their domestic legal provisions with the highest standards of human rights set by the Treaties they have ratified, and to ratify them if they have not yet done so;
2) comply or ratify the CEDAW treaty against gender discrimination in which poverty is included;
3) fully implement UNGA Resolution 67/146 on “Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation”;
4) ban CFM in order to allow girls to receive education and develop their own autonomy along their adolescence and adulthood;
5) comply with the Maputo Protocol that protects African women from economic, political, social, and physical violence, and urge those states who have not ratified it yet to do so;
6) comply with the Istanbul Convention that protects women from domestic violence, which is has not yet been eradicated:
7) promote parity at all societal levels to grant women and girls an opportunity to participate in sectors they have been set apart from;
8) pass laws that equal women and men’s salaries in order to close the gender pay gap;
9) pass laws in which maternity and paternity leaves are equalled, granting women the possibility of creating a family without the having to sacrifice her work life;
10) remove all barriers that hinder women’s participation in economic and political decision-making at all levels, both at the institutional and private ones.
For further information, please contact Nicola Giovannini, Press & Public Affairs Coordinator, email: ngiovannini@npwj.org
