Governments make commitments to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Beijing Platform for Action or treaties like the Convention on the Elimination on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). However implementation has a long way to go in translating commitments to women’s rights into changes in women’s lives.
Accountability to women begins with increasing the number of women in decision-making positions. Consider these worldwide figures. Women are outnumbered two to one in political parties. Only one in five parliamentarians is a woman. There is one woman for every nine men in senior management positions. But progress is within reach. Half of the 22 countries that have reached 30 % of women in parliament come from developing regions. These and more are presented in new publications of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
Published at the halfway point to the 2015 deadline in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), two UNIFEM publications show that gender equality and women's empowerment are critical for attaining most of the other goals like primary education, improving maternal health and other related cases and eradicating extreme poverty.
Know more about these as UNIFEM launches "Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009 Who answers to Women? Gender and Accountability" and "Making the MDGs Work for All: Gender-Responsive Rights-Based Approaches to the MDGs" on February 6, 2009 10AM at the Diamond Hotel.
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