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Gender Equality

© O. Brendan

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995 and Millennium Development Goal 3 are two examples of the commitment of the international community and of the United Nations to work towards the achievement of gender equality.

At the recent MDG Summit that took place at the UN Headquarters in New York on 20-22 September 2010, the Secretary-General secured more than USD 40 billion for women’s and children’s health over the next five years as part of a global action plan to achieve development goals by 2015.

Promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women worldwide is one of UNESCO’s two global priorities for 2008-2013, and the Organization is committed to ensuring that all of its programmes and initiatives contribute fully to these objectives. The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, affirmed her commitment to gender equality in her Mission Statement entitled UNESCO in a Globalised World: New Humanism for the 21st Century as, "I consider gender equality to be one of the most important goals, both political and humanistic, of our times. I am strongly motivated to make UNESCO invest more efforts in attaining this objective."

Water and Gender is also listed as one of UN-Water’s Thematic Priority Areas in its 2010-2011 Work Programme.

More recently, on 2 July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly voted unanimously to create a single UN body tasked with accelerating progress in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment: the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women.

For its fourth phase of operations, WWAP is asserting a stronger commitment to gender mainstreaming in all of its activities and products, in particular the production of the 4th edition of the UN World Water Development Report.

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Facts and figures extracted from WWDR3, Water in a Changing World (2009). Click on the links to know more!

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