Women still outnumber men among the world's poor, account for two-thirds of illiterate adults and are more likely to work at low paying jobs without social protection, 15 years after nations pledged to close the gender gap at a historic UN conference in Beijing.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said on Monday that while many countries had made progress in improving education for girls and adopting national laws and programs to promote women's rights, gender equality remains a distant goal.
“While we have seen advances in the past 15 years, we have not seen enough,” Migiro told the opening session of the Commission on the Status of Women. “We need to move from commitment to action.”
Migiro said women continued to be plagued by sexual violence and the maternal mortality rate remains “unacceptably high,” while political representation remains too low. She said only 25 countries had at least 30 percent women in parliaments last year.
The commission will spend the next two weeks reviewing progress on the platform adopted by 189 countries at the 1995 UN women's conference in Beijing that called for governments to end discrimination against women and close the gender gap in 12 critical areas, including health, education, employment, political participation and human rights.
“In real life, women still face unequal treatment and are disadvantaged in gender competition,” Chinese representative Meng Xiaosi (孟曉駟), the vice chair of the State Council's committee on women and children.
She said gender stereotyping was still “deeply entrenched” and discrimination against women “continued to be widespread in the subconsciousness, in hidden standards and under the table.”
The Group of 77, which represents 132 mainly developing countries and China, said the plight of women in developing countries had been exacerbated by the global economic crisis, continuing food and energy shortages and the challenges posed by climate change.
Spanish Minister of Equality Bibiana Aido, speaking on behalf of the EU, said that “even though EU women have already attained high levels of education, women are still underrepresented in decision-making positions in politics and in the labor market.”
She also warned that the economic crisis may have “negative effects” on progress toward gender equality.
On a positive note, Gambian Vice President Isatou Njie-Saidy, also minister of women's affairs, cited a significant increase in the number of girls going beyond elementary school in the west African nation, an increase in the number of women working and running major businesses, and a drop in maternal mortality from 1,050 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 556 per 100,000 in 2006.
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CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique