On International Women's Day, we celebrate the power and potential of women and girls.
We recognize their courage, resilience and leadership. We mark the ways in which we are
making progress towards a more gender-equal world.
At the same time, we see how that progress is being undermined by multiple,
interlocking and compounding generational crises.
Currently, we are witnessing the horrifying situation in Ukraine,
where the impacts on women and girls including the hundreds of thousands displaced, remind us,
that all conflicts, from Ukraine to Myanmar, to Afghanistan, from the Sahel to Yemen, exact
their highest price from women and girls. The Secretary General has been clear, War Must Stop.
Recently, we have seen the impact of COVID-19, in increasing inequalities, driving poverty
and violence against women and girls; and rolling back their progress in employment,
health and education. The accelerating crises of climate change and environmental degradation
are disproportionately undermining the rights and wellbeing of women and girls.
They are multiplying insecurity at all levels, from individual and household, to national. Rising
temperatures, extended droughts, violent storms and floods are resulting in loss of livelihoods,
depleting resources and fueling migration and displacement. The latest major IPCC report
on climate change, and our Secretary-General, have warned us that nearly half of humanity
is living in the danger zone now and that many ecosystems are at the point of no return now.
Climate change is a threat multiplier. But women,
and especially young women, are solution multipliers.
We have today the opportunity to put women and girls at the centre of our planning and action;
and to integrate gender perspectives into global and national laws and policies. We
have the opportunity to re-think, re-frame and re-allocate resources.
We have the opportunity to benefit from the leadership of women and girls environmental
defenders and climate activists to guide our planet's conservation.
We need Indigenous women s inter-generational knowledge, practices and skills.
It will take unprecedented levels of global cooperation and solidarity to succeed,
but there is no alternative to success. We must protect our hard-won gains on
human rights and women's rights, and lead decisively to leave no woman or girl behind.
We have a blueprint to follow. It involves women's full
and equal participation and leadership in decision-making;
their access to green jobs and the blue economy; their equal access to finance and resources.
We need to ensure universal social protection and a care economy that protects us all.
We have to scale up financing for gender-responsive climate,
environmental and disaster risk initiatives; including for COVID-19 recovery and to
increase resilience to future shocks. The solution is there. We resolve to pursue it.
Let us make this International Women's Day a moment to recall
that we have the answers not just for SDG 5 but, through the advancement of gender equality, for
all 17 SDG goals and Agenda 2030. I look forward to working with every one of you to that end.
I thank you.