Townhall Meeting with the United Nations Secretary-General and Civil Society in the margins of the seventieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women

Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today.

Of course, this is the annual town hall with civil society on the margins of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. On your behalf and mine, I welcome the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Gutierrez, to this important discussion with all of you.

Again this year, as every year, and I hopefully also every year to come, we are feeling the energy, the power and the commitment to make the world a better place. And I'm looking to this room this morning. I see the diversity we should be seeing in all rooms. I see the feminist movement in all its diversity. So welcome to all of you as well.

And if I may, I'm going to ask for a round of applause to all of you as well this morning.

Dear friends, dear feminists, we support your relentless fights for making the world a better place for people and planet, and we join you in that effort. I know many of our sisters and colleagues could not join us in person this year. Travel restrictions and costs, visas and closed airspaces still make some spaces exclusive. But allow me to say a big hello to all of you joining us online and to our sisters and brothers who are in areas of conflict. We are with you.

We stand with you in solidarity. We need, of course, ceasefires everywhere now.

Dear friends, dear feminists, despite the challenges, CSW remains an important space for all of us. In the first two days of the Commission's 70th session, over 3,000 civil society partners have collected their passes, showcasing how critical this space remains, and it will continue to be critical. Friends, we are meeting during the 70th session of the Commission under the priority theme Access to Justice. As you all know, yesterday Member States formally adopted the agreed conclusions for the first time in 70 years by a vote, a vote of a vast majority in favor. The fact that the Commission, for the first time in its history, went to a vote tells us about the headwinds that we are all facing.

But for those in the room, we saw and heard through loud applause that the pushback against the pushback is just as strong, if not stronger.

You, civil society, are the engine behind pushing back against the pushback and pushing forward. You are the drivers of changes on the forefront of conflict resolution, of climate action, and of pushing for progress and sustainable development. CSW 70 takes place in these challenging times. But I know that we all rise for for this moment. I also would like to take this moment, if I may, to remember and honor the many brave women human rights defenders who were killed in the past year for speaking up for standing up for working for peace and justice.

We honor their legacy.

And my sincerest thanks again to the Secretary General for continuing to prioritize this annual meeting with civil society.

SG in a few minutes, in a few moments, will provide opening remarks. Once he has done so, we will open the floor for reflections, recommendations, questions and answers. But on his behalf, if I may, Secretary General, I would strongly encourage you all, as he has done in the previous years, to please use this opportunity to not just ask questions, but to come up with solutions and recommendations from your perspectives, which are extremely valuable.

We will select a set of three speakers at a time, so please keep your interventions short so that we can ensure the SG gets to hear from as many of us a view as possible. I now invite the Secretary General of the United nations to deliver his remarks. Secretary.

Dear friends, a very good morning to all of you and it is wonderful to be again with you. And I look forward to this town hall every year. Let me start with my profound thanks to each of you. You are on the front lines every day, defending hard won rights for women and girls, opening new doors, building coalitions when societies are being pulled apart. And I know that that work is not easy, that it comes at a price you may face.

And many of you are facing threats, intimidation and harassment when you push for change. You are pushing against the patriarchy and the patriarchy is pushing back. We still live in a male dominated world with a male dominated culture. And gender equality is fundamentally a question of power. Power.

We see those power gaps everywhere, from the arena of politics to economic decision making, to the technologies shaping our future, including AI. Patriarchy is rampant in the silicon valleys of the world. And that is where power today is becoming more and more concentrated. And power is never given willingly, even when sharing that power benefits everyone. Every inch of progress is earned and you have earned it by doing what the abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott described long ago as shaking the foundations of privilege.

Dear friends, you are foundation shakers and you are shaking our. You are shaking out justice, dignity and equality for communities across the globe. But I'm not just here to say thank you. I'm here to listen to your suggestions and your advice. These are trying times.

A bitter wind is blowing around the world. That wind is hardening attitudes and fueling a backlash against women's rights. A backlash that thrives on disinformation, that exploits fear and insecurity, that weaponizes culture wars, and that seeks to push women into silence. Well, the last thing I want from you today is silence. I want you to speak freely,

to tell me what you are seeing, to tell me what is changing, to tell me how we are responding and what together we must do. And I do not want diplomatic language. I want your truth and your guidance. Dear friends, I've benefited from that guidance.

Over the past decade, working together, we have shown what can change when gender equality is at the center. Our institutions become stronger and more credible when women are in senior leadership. Our outcomes improve when women are included as decision makers from the very start. And that is what the United nations strategy to advance gender parity is all about. For the first time in UN history, we achieved parity among our senior leaders at headquarters and globally, parity among our top representatives around the world, parity at the professional levels.

And it has paid dividends for everyone, improving our work, bolstering our legitimacy and enhancing our ability to serve people. And here I'd like to give you an explanation. Looking at 160 high level officials of the UN, we were at about 30% of women 10 years ago. We are now at full parity with a little bit more women than men. And people might think that to do that I had bent the rules or changed the rules to benefit women.

It's totally false. All the selections that were made and led to parity were based on strict criteria of independence and impartiality. The difference was when women believe that there is an effective opportunity and come forward. Indeed, we discover that in a very clear majority, in this case, the best candidates were women.

And this is particularly true in the public sectors. We see men still, I mean, sometimes those more qualified with an attraction for the private sector. We see still women largely attracted to the public sector. And so indeed our experience is that we have best women in more quantity than best men. When we see the different posts that we have put for candidacies and then with panels evaluating who were the best candidates.

So I think it's very important to say this. The question to reach gender parity, you do not need to bend the rules. You just need to provide women the same opportunities provided by men. And you will discover that that will lead to effective gender parity.

Our Gender Equality Acceleration Plan continues this work, coordinating action across the United nations family for real change in the lives of women and girls. And we will keep advancing all these efforts in the UN and far beyond. After all, the greatest obstacles and the greatest opportunities are in societies themselves, in laws, institutions and power structures. That is why your work matters so much. You are pushing leaders to act when they would rather postpone and you are expanding the boundaries of the possible.

Women are leading the fight for rights across the board. From else to climate, from peace building to labor. Don't let up. Progress is fragile. Rights can be rolled back much faster than they were won.

Space can close quickly. And yes, fatigue is also real, especially when opponents are well funded and ruthless. But I want you to know that your work is making a real difference for women and girls, for peace and sustainable development, for human rights, and for our shared future for each and every one of us. So, dear friends, I'm looking forward to hearing your views and advice. But let me conclude with some advice of my own.

Keep shaking the foundations of privilege. You can count on me to be with you now and always. And together we will say loud and clear, no to push back. No to the rollback. No to going back.

No surrender. Because we will never, ever give up. And I think.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary General, for your powerful remarks. Indeed, all the nos that you have just guided us to continue to move forward with, we will no to the pushback, no to the rollback, and no giving up. So thank you again for your inspiration. Always.

Now we will open the floor for your interventions. We would like to invite the following speakers for their reflections. First, in keeping with tradition, I would like to give the floor to NGO CSW this year to Ms. Rosa Lizarde. Rosa is a feminist advocate for women's economic, environmental, gender and racial justice. She currently serves as the Global Director of the Feminist Task Force ftf, a global coalition calling for gender equality to end poverty, founded under the auspices of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

Rosa, over to you please.

Thank you, Madam Ed. Mr. Secretary General, Excellencies, feminists and colleagues, I am here representing NGO CSW as a co chair. We are the global convener of the NGO CSW Forum, the largest annual forum running parallel to the official csw. Whether there be a liquidity crisis, defunding or no funding, visa bans or bonds, accreditation or no accreditation, women come to the forum because their lives matter and finding solidarity and solutions is critical. We stand in solidarity with those who could not come due to conflict and war and call for peace and a stop to all wars.

We give utmost importance to the gender equality work here at the un, most particularly now around UN aid reform initiatives, including the proposed strategic merger of UN women and unfpa. We have been here before. We have seen reform, revitalization and now it seems re reform. It's fitting to remind us of all of the spirit behind the birth of UN women and the Important example of how member states and gender equality advocates in the un. With more than a million joining the gender equality architecture reform campaign, including the ftf, to advocate for this transformation.

Lessons learned from the pioneering experience could inform current thinking, thinking about reform, in fact. Mr. Secretary General, last June we wrote to you about NGOCSW's collective effort regarding UN80 gathering over 700 signatures from organizations and individuals. And I'd like to highlight certain points about this right now. 1. We stressed reorganizing in a way that significantly strengthens and not whittles down the UN's gender equality work, leveraging its collective power to protect and promote the rights of women and girls and all their diversity, and allocating substantial resources for this work.

Back then we called for ambitiously funded gender equality architecture 2. Reformists take place through collaborative, democratic, transparent and inclusive processes. Consultations with feminist groups is not only critical, it is necessary to ensure trust building, open and fluid communication and accountability. 3. Mandates, protection and legal continuity must remain unchanged at a moment when women's rights are under threat and the pushback is real, in particular SRHR rights.

It is critical that any unaided reform process preserve and protect this mandate to ensure continued progress of the SDGs as well as ICPD, Beijing, CEDAW and the full realization of human rights for all. 4. Ensure that in any UN cost saving efforts, no capacity or autonomy will be weakened or lost in those UN organizations that champion and advance the lives of women and girls. In closing, Mr. Secretary General, we know that this will be the last town hall at a CSW with you. Let me thank you in advance for being a champion on gender equality and parity, women's human rights, democracy, people peace, multilateralism.

It is with the utmost respect that I say and with the utmost hope that this time next year we will use the salutation. Madam Secretary General, I thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, Rosa. I would like now to give the floor to Maria Leon Gonzalez from the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. Maria, over to you.

Thank you, Madame Ed. Your Excellency. Maria. My name is Maria Leon Gonzalez and I am honored to be here today on behalf of the Young Feminist Caucus and the Feminist Unity Cross Coalition Working Group, an alliance of civil society coalitions representing hundreds of organizations on the ground in every region of the world. Like many young feminists, this week I celebrate the adoption of the csw.

Agreed conclusions. Though in different circumstances than in previous years, it is still incredibly valuable to have an outcome document that upholds the rights that we've been fighting for. For decades, on the ground, in our communities and in these halls, as thousands of women and girls are living in areas affected by conflict across in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Sudan, in Congo, among others. And as we confront an ecological breakdown that will affect marginalized communities in the global south the hardest, we can't roll back on women's rights. Not an inch, especially not now.

In addition to strong normative standards, we need institutions that implement them. That is why we are deeply concerned about the proposed merging of UNFPA and UN women. Because it risks weakening the UN institutional capacity on SRHR and gender equality. At the country level. A merger could lead to the loss of technical expertise and programmatic capacity to weaken implementation and impact.

UNFPA and UN women each have distinct and irreplaceable mandates. According to our analysis of the two entities strategic plans, there is only a 20 to 30% overlap in in their programmatic activities. And these two agencies hold some of the smallest budgets within the UN system. So, Mr. Secretary General, as feminist civil society, we can't help but wonder why are two of the main players who defend our rights the first targets for streamlining when they are not the most redundant nor the most resource intensive UN entities? This is not where the answer to the liquidity crisis lies.

The 2023 assessment has said it. A merger might even result in increased costs. I want to commend and recognize your commitment to gender equality throughout your term. And in this vein, women's rights organizations and feminist networks ask you, your excellency, what kind of gender architecture do you want to leave behind as your legacy? We remain committed collectively to contribute to the process of strengthening and protecting multilateral institutions.

But we ask in return that the voices of gender equality advocates both inside and outside the UN system are taken into account, that we be consulted and brought into the UN 80 process with clear timelines, and that UN leadership explore and propose alternatives to the merger. Rather than dismantling the infrastructure of the Beijing and Cairo agendas which we have spent decades building, we are here to defend what was built and to build what is still needed. And we're not going anywhere. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you, Maria. And now I will give the floor to Professor Joy Ngozi Ezelo C, Senior Advocate of Nigeria. She is a distinguished law professor and former Dean of Law at the University of Nigeria, with over three decades of expertise in international law, human rights and gender justice. Over to you, Joy.

Thank you. Thank you, Secretary General, for this opportunity to engage and for all you've done to mainstream gender and promote Women's leadership within UN system and beyond. As a law professor, activist, feminist scholar, I'm mindful we are living in a difficult time in the world. That reminds me as a student of international law more than three decades ago, about the crude analogy of the concept of sovereignty likened to relationship of a giant and a dwarf. As a CSO advocate, we are worried about government clamping down protests and shrinking civic space.

Attack on human rights defenders As a gender equality and women's empowerment champion, I'm worried about declining funding to do important women's work in an unprecedented era of xgbv, including digital violence, spike in sexual violence as an instrument of war, especially in the Sudan, ongoing brutal war is unacceptable. Access to justice for women in search of justice is still a mirage. Women need to obtain effective remedy and we know it is in this area that serious underfunding as actors and donors hardly want to fund services. In this context, I am particularly worried and my coalition from west and Central Africa about the proposed measure of UNFPA and UN women. Will this new architecture not even undermine funding again?

Because they may end up using the same amount to do this work. Funding for the important work on gender equality for the UN women that is the entity that is entrusted with this gender equality. Will this not make funding their mandates more difficult? They are both huge organizations. I've been in the field in Sudan and I see the services women need are currently not even provided by UNFPA because of lack of funding.

Solution Mr. Secretary General, I think it's time that the state must tell themselves truth. Gender budgeting is a solution that is part of accountability and state responsibility to enforce and fulfill women's rights and their commitment to United nations and their commitment to other ratified international treaties. It is 30 years plus since Beijing World Conference. Yes, we've seen measurable progress, but regressive tendencies is now more audacious. Now more than any other time, it's time to reassert that women's rights are human rights and that states must pay also fair share and must be held accountable and must contribute to advancing women's rights and empowerment of all rights of women and girls.

Inclusion now and inclusion and gender inclusion and and inclusion in budget should be our pursuit. Thank you, Mr. Secretary General.

Thank you, Joy. And now I turn to the Secretary General. Back to you, Secretary General, for your responses. Thank you.

Well, first of all, thank you very much for your interventions and I'd like to say first of all to Ms. Rosa Lizard that I am entirely in agreement with the four points that you raised.

And of course, the last one was in relation to the mergers. And the mergers were also the points raised by Maria Leon Gonzalez and Joe Ngozi. Now, first of all, UN Women was not born out of nothing. It was born out of the merger of three organizations. And one of the points that for me is essential is to have powerful organizations in a context in which we have a very large dispersion of our efforts.

Now, UN Women and UNFPA deal largely with the same issues. And what we want is to have a much stronger organization able to be the main instrument of the United nations in relation to gender equality and in relation to the questions of power that are the central questions in gender, Gender equality. And one of the conditions that we put for this merger is that the mandates are not changed, which means the merger is not a merger of mandates, is a merger of organizations maintaining integrally the mandates of the two organizations. And that is the central question. The central question is not how things are organized.

The central question is that the mandates are maintained. But the truth is, as it was said, we are in a situation where resources are more limited. And we see that in the un, but we see that also in women's organizations across the world. Now, when you have two organizations, you have two back offices, you have the administrative sectors that are common, that are separate, and a number of other things that have nothing to do with the action of the organizations, but that corresponds to duplication. So what we want, and this is what we are going to do with the digital compact, we are going to, sorry, the humanitarian compact, we are going to put in common supply chains, we are going to put in common procurement, we are going to put in common a number of other functions to liberate resources for the exercise of the mandates of the organizations.

And this is one of the objectives we have with this merger. A more powerful organization and at the same time being able to transfer resources from administrative functions that we can effectively condensate to the exercise, the effective exercise of the maintenance on the ground. Of course, we will have to be very attentive and we are preparing a solid alliance of countries in order to make sure that in the General assembly this is not put into question. And I'm absolutely sure after what we have seen yesterday, that we have a solid majority to make sure that the mandates are not in any case, put into question. So this is not something to weaken our capacity in relation to gender equality.

This is something to strengthen our capacity in relation to gender equality.

You ask me what legacy? I mean, I never cared about legacies. You Know, the problem with legacies is people become so narcissically concerned with their legacy that they forget that what matters is what we do.

My central question in these 10 years have been based on what is my way to look into the world? Because I came from a political activity in the past. The central problem of gender equality is a question of power. And what is the central objective of all my activities is to change power relations or to help change power relations. And the truth is that the importance of gender parity and the importance of having at all levels of society parity in decision making processes is relevant exactly because it changes power relations within organizations and within societies.

And I have to say that the trend, in my opinion, remains a positive trend. Look at the number of women in universities all around the world compared with the number of men. And when I see these, it's very interesting to read. There is a book I recommend to all of you called Furious Minds that has the, I would say, political philosophy behind these ideas of Trumpism. And one of the very interesting elements of those ideologies is the valuation of what they call masculinity.

And it is clear that what we are witnessing, in my opinion, with this pushback is not a true reverse of power relations, is, I hope, the swan song of patriarchy. Patriarchy all of a sudden felt that it was being put very seriously into question. And so this is kind of a desperate attempt to use all kinds of methods and all kinds of tricks and in many aspects, even criminal activities, as we see in sexual violence, as we see in the harassment to women in powerful positions, both physically and the digital world. I think this is a desperate attempt of the patriarchs not to lose their position of power. But I think that that transformation is irreversible.

And my main concern in everything I do here in this organization, whether for a legacy or not that doesn't matter, is to do everything I can to help change power relations. Because it's changing power relations that we guarantee that effective rights for women and girls become at the level of the rights that men still have in our societies. And that is the central battle, in my opinion. Of course, that battle has many fronts. Sexual exploitation, abuse, sexual harassment in the organizations, sexual violence, the attempts to discredit women in positions of responsibility, the resistance to transformation of legislation to give equal rights to women.

So the resistance is there. And to a certain extent, the weapons have been more violent recently. And I see in that violence exactly the feeling that they are losing the battle and so becoming desperate, they become more violent. And we need to respond not with violence, but with firm determination, denouncing everything that is wrong and doing everything to change the power relations in all the institutions in relation to which we are connected.

Thank you very much, Secretary General. Indeed, actually dismantling this power and changing the power relations is what we are all trying to do, guided by you and also guided by the voices of everyone in civil society, organizations and others who believe in gender equality and women's rights to keep pushing forward. I think this has been an engaging conversation so far. Thank you, Secretary General. Thank you to Rosa Maria and Joy.

And now I know that you are all wanting to take part in this conversation as well. And I would try to give as many voices as possible and to hear as many voices as possible today for the Secretary General to respond. So we turn back to the baskets approach that we've had for the past two years. When you came into the room, you had dropped your names and your organizations in these baskets. I will try to ensure that I get voices from every part of the room as well.

And to ensure that this is a fair and random process. I will be pulling one card at a time for from each of the baskets and each basket representing a section of the room. And I will be calling on the name and the organization. So we will start with the mezzanine. If I call your name, please go to one of the assigned speaking areas in the room.

If you are able. Our staff are standing next to each available microphone, so please make your way to the closest one to you. If you are not able, please do let a volunteer know and a microphone will come to you when speaking. Please be brief to ensure we can hear from as many voices as possible.

So the first three cards will be from the mezzanine.

I pull three together.

The first card is tia oros, seventh generation fund for indigenous peoples. To be followed by paulette metang, akamaje helpage global network. If I'm reading correct, alamaj help page global network. And to be followed by sara denisa, helpage international. Please.

Tia, you have the floor.

Thank you, Excellencies. Brothers and sisters, sisters and brothers, relatives of the world. My name is Tia Oroz and I represent the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples. I'm raising into our collective consciousness today, highlighting for us today the critical concern of the 534 year long war, the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Our peoples who are already pushed to the crevices of existence in civil society, in all aspects of society.

We call for their safe return. We call for them to be found.

We call for their future and the future of this next generation generations. We also must take into action and into that consciousness the countless Indigenous women and children throughout the world impacted by all features of violence and war. And we call for their health, their safety and their well being as essential components for their self determination and to assure justice and peace for all of us, for all of our futures, for our many relations of the world and our common Mother Earth. How can this happen? We can honor women and girls, we can respect women and girls, we can acknowledge, we can see, we can uplift and amplify the inherent power of Indigenous women and girls.

How does this happen? Fund Indigenous women and girl led strategies on their own terms, in their own homes, in their own communities. The strategies and initiatives they know from their lived experiences, from the history of their ancestors, from their cultural knowledge, from the heart and spirit of where they live and breathe, from their waters. They have the answers to the remedies and to the solutions that will heal not only themselves and their families and communities and nations, but the earth as well and for all of us. Thank you.

Thank you, tia. I give the floor now to Paulette, please.

Thank you for all. I'm Paulette Meta Akamesh and Global Network of Helpage International.

How can we develop gender and age responsive access to justice systems which truly include the voice and experiences of those most marginalized, including older women who often are subject to gender ageist and patriarchal norms and unable to access information on their rights.

How will you complement gender responsive policies, changes with work to achieve gender negative norms and attitude toward other women within communities and institutions? Thank you so much.

Thank you, Paulette. I now give the floor to Sarah. Sarah, over to you.

Thank you. Structure, gender inequalities and discrimination shape women's lives in early childhood to older age, producing compounded and intersecting disadvantages later in life. This is a combination of various factors from unpaid care rules, economic exclusion to discrimination in education and in the workplace. We are living in a world where we are facing huge backlash against gender equality. And while we combat, we need a multifaceted approach.

The UN needs to take an approach which truly integrates and raises the voices and experiences of women and girls at all levels, as well as creating an environment where we are supporting one another to influence change amongst governments. We need changes to our system. We need to ensure we understand experiences by collecting data throughout women's lives, not start at 15 and stop at 49, especially in key areas such as health, including sexual, reproductive health and rights in limiting the data we collect we are missing a significant proportion of the population, especially in older age, where the numbers of women are rising. Currently, 15% of women are over 60 and this will rise to nearly a quarter of the global female population by 2050. However, they remain invisible in policies and targeted programs because there is no data to inform policy systems.

We call for gender data to be systematically disaggregated in 10 years course. And we must ensure we have a more intersection, a more intersectional lens to promote a greater understanding of all girls and women's needs across the life course. In doing that, we will be able to understand barriers, challenges, as well as the opportunity to support more gender and age responsive policies. This must also be supported by the voices and leadership of women of all ages working together to support implementation of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action and to combat gender discrimination and patriarchy and patriarchy across the life course. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. I don't think I have much to add. I am entirely in agreement with what was said. I would like to underline in relation to what Tia Oros said, I mean, my deep respect and my deep admiration for the role indigenous peoples today provide in relation to the equilibrium between women, human and nature. I mean, and how dramatic it is to see, look at the Amazon for instance, how indigenous people are being attacked, harassed, sometimes killed, in order to allow for economic interests of the worst kind to exploit nature and to destroy nature.

And so, I mean, obviously in this context, women suffer particularly. And I want to express my deep solidarity in relation to Paulette Metag. I mean, I think what is important in relation to the question you asked is indeed to be able to always, in all circumstances have in everything we do a gender perspective. In every program we establish as gender perspective in a budget, we do a gender perspective. That is the only way to achieve the goals that you mentioned.

And Sara Danesi, I think the best tribute I can pay to your excellent intervention is not to make any comment because I mean in full agreement. And I think it's important to have more time for other voices to speak. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the speakers and also for the responses of the Secretary General. Thank you, Secretary General.

Now we move to the main floor and I will also pick up three cards.

Oh, I had four, so I'll keep them.

We have anya omajua oteri from nigeria. We have maria noel lopez, Organizatione de Antidae. I can't read anymore, but I think you understand. And then we have Emiko Akami from, from Japan Development Information Organization. And we have from Una Santiago.

It's not very clear, but it's Leanne Marcelche. So let us start with. No, not this one.

Anya.

Mr. Secretary General, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to speak with very simple language, as you said in the beginning, so. Adolescent girls with autism face unique and often overlooked challenges as they navigate physiological and social changes. Particularly in many parts of Africa, access to essential services such as early diagnosis, specialised therapy and family support remains limited, prohibitively expensive. While some regions struggle with long wait list, many families in our communities lack both the awareness and the financial resources needed to seek appropriate care. How can the United nations and its partners strengthen global and regional efforts to ensure that girls with autism and other developmental challenges, especially in underserved communities, receive the support, protection and inclusive services they need to thrive?

How can this happen? I think a solution will be a key step forward is stronger collaboration between the education and health sectors to expand community based supports for girls with autism and other developmental challenges. This includes investing in training more women educators and community workers in speech to therapy specialized support techniques so that they can serve as trusted mentors and support figures in schools and communities. Such efforts will also empower families with practical guidance to better support their children at home, helping to build more inclusive and supporting environments for these girls. Thank you.

Thank you, ania. We move now to maria noel lopez collado. Please go. You have the floor, maria.

There. Okay.

Thank you, Excellencies. I'm going to speak in Spanish. I am representing the organization that represents different groups in the Americas. I'm going to be brief in light of the backtracking, where clearly, when it comes to rights, we are facing backsliding in several countries in the region where imperialism connects strongly with armed conflict and masculinity has become a mandate. In fact, I would like to refer to an Argentine author, Rita Segato, who to certain extent explains this masculinity mandate.

It's a very interesting concept and I actually share what the Secretary General said, that this masculinity, this patriarchy, is really trying to resist change that feminism has been offering. And this also relates to sexual violence, which has become more structural, more cruel, against women, against children. And my question is, in these times of systematic attacks, what place can social and solid and economy based in solidarity help empower women as an alternative to capitalism, the most cruel forms of capitalism, so to speak. So to promote empowerment of women in order to perhaps change these structures that reproduce so much cruelty. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Maria Noel. We move now to Emiko Akami from International Development Information Organization, Japan. You have the floor.

Thank you. Hi. I'm very nervous.

Is it okay?

Hi. So my name is Amy from Japan. So I work in Japan with women and children through English education and communication. I believe that when women feel I can trust my own voice and express myself, it has a strong and positive effect on children's confidence and courage to try.

So in many classrooms, teachers are very busy and some children quietly lose confidence. But I witnessed something powerful. Students who had never spoken in class raised their hand and said, let me try.

I believe confidence begins in childhood.

When children grow up living, my voice matters. They are more likely to express themselves in society. Especially for girls, having the courage to speak and share ideas is very important for gender equality. That is why I believe elementary education is connected to the future future of equality.

Everything begins with a small moment when a child said, let me try. But still problem with English education in Japan. So I want to solve it. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Amico.

We move now to Ms. Marcellino una San Diego, please. You have the floor.

Your Excellency, thank you for your leadership and the efforts of the United nations to document conflict related violence and support accountability in the war in Ukraine. I am a youth delegate from the United nations association of San Diego. My name is Leah Mordechai. My family is from Ukraine and parts of my family and many of my family friends are under constant threat of gender based violence. Ukraine, As a young person in the United States that witnesses these ongoing reports of gender based violence in Ukraine and other countries around the world, what opportunities does the United nations see for youth to contribute meaningfully to protecting women and supporting justice efforts around the world?

Thank you.

Thank you, Leon. And apologies for pronouncing your name wrong, but I move to the Secretary General for his responses.

Well, thank you very much. First, Ms. Ari Oteri. One of the problems we have in general in governments and in the UN is the logic of working in silos.

And usually education and health are not really working together, as you mentioned. And it is essential to have a complementary view in which education programs and health programs merge in the way that they are able to address the kind of challenges that you have mentioned. And we have a large long way to go even within the un. And this is one of the reasons of the unity is exactly to bring the agencies together and to make sure that they have common programs, common advocacy, and to the extent possible, common.

Shared resources. But what you said is absolutely true.

Maria Noel Lopez Estamos Assistindo En augunas partes de Latin America, de gobiernos, mars de recha y naturalmentevencion die Estados Unidos coyoste arrido. I think that when policies are much more conservative and less.

Dedicated to gender equality, this makes it so that the capabilities of communities to organize and to establish their own forms of social cooperation, economic cooperation and work in education and gender equality, it's the work of. The work of the communities becomes even more important. And that's why I think that Latin America, particularly when policies become more conservative, civil society and local communities is very important, as well as civil society organizations at the local level, they become much more important.

In relation to Emiko Akami, first of all, I would like to say that when I was in government, my main priority in education was to expand prescholar education and we managed to get from 20% to 80% of coverage during my mandate as Prime Minister. And indeed, prescholar education is a fantastic instrument of social integration and I think even more important for young girls than for young boys. And so that is very important. On the other hand, you described the difference between a patriarchy in education, which is the teacher teaches and the students listen to what is a non patriarchal education, which is the students have a key role in expressing their own opinions and in playing a direct action in the way the educational mechanisms work. And so I fully agree with what you said about the need to give social students, and especially girl students, a direct role and not only listening to the teachers.

Son Diego well, the situation in Ukraine is an enormous tragedy and obviously whenever there is a war, the women pay the highest price. We have our country team in Ukraine working hard in order to alleviate the dramatic impacts of the war. And on the other hand, we have kept a very clear position here in the secretariat, which is to say that we need to have an immediate ceasefire and conditional ceasefire and that we need to have a just peace and the just peace. Peace is a peace that respects the UN Charter, international law and the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Unfortunately, it's not clear sometimes when we see these peace negotiations to where they are leading.

And unfortunately the war is going on. But I think we must do everything we can to stop this war respecting the rights of Ukraine and at the same time to do everything during the war to increase the capacity to protect women and children that are the most impacted negatively, including through being victims of sexual and gender, sexual violence and also difficulties in access to reproductive health and other, all other aspects of discrimination against women that are absolutely unacceptable. We will Be doing everything we can, but of course we need to stop the war.

One more round, Secretary General. I will draw again.

Also from the main floor, Celine Ruffi. Itf to be followed by Bayan Murshid, to be followed by Tatiane Diaz. So we start with Celine.

Celine, you have the floor.

Well, thank you. And thank you, your excellency. I'm coming from the International Transport Workers Federation and I'm also a youth rep and the Ruben rep in the. In the International Transport Workers Federation. So actually my question was a bit addressed, but I'm still wanting to put it there.

I wonder, what commitment will the UN make to ensure that young women leaders are including decision making process at national and global level? Because this is something that you mentioned during your intervention is much a trick, especially given the shift in power. So that's my question to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Celine.

Now we move to Bayan Murshid. You have the floor. Your Excellencies. First, I want to take time to say how grateful I am to be here as a young woman. So I am here actually with my student association from University of Montreal.

We're actually representing UN women. So yeah, we are all young women in our 20s, some of them, some of us are even 19. We are full of hope and ambition and it's such a privilege to be here.

So that said, I wanted to talk about the veto power and how it prevents the Security Council from acting during a major humanitarian crisis. And I wanted to ask you, how can the UN preserve its legitimacy? Especially I wanted to ask you if you see realistic prospects for reform or evolution of the councils of working methods that could both limit paralysis and especially allow greater inclusion of the feminist perspectives and the global south. Sorry. Approaches to conflict resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bayan. And now we move to. To Tatiane Diaz, you have the floor.

Hello and thank you for this opportunity. My name is Tatiana Diaz and I'm here representing the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. My question is simple, or maybe not. It is how will the UN protect,

maintain and grow the role of civil society with a growing authoritarian world?

Thank you. I thank you, Tatiane. Back to you, Secretary General, for your responses. Thank you. Well, first of all, in relation to internal policies we have in the pact of the future, one of the chapters is in relation to the new social contract.

And we are asking our country teams to support government and to support societies. Exactly. To do the kind of changes that Celine Ruffi mentioned. So this was very central in the orientations that based on the pact of the future that was approved by General assembly two years ago. That is central in the orientation that we give to our country teams in support to governments and societies.

Now, Bayan, You have just mentioned the most, I mean, dramatic problem that the UN has, The body that was created to ensure peace and security is the Security Council. The problem is the Security Council was formed in 1945 with small adjustments, until now practically irrelevant. And it represents the world of 1945.

We have five permanent members. Three are European, U.K. france and Russia. One is Asian China and the other is the United States. There is no African country, no Latin American country. So there is a problem of legitimacy.

The Security Council no longer represents the world of today. And then there is a problem of effectiveness because of the geopolitical divides and the use of veto. What we are witnessing is a paralysis of the Security Council in relation to the most dramatic conflicts that we are facing in the world. And that is for us an enormous problem. Because when I go to, And I remember that so many times of our colleagues telling us, because the Security Council was not taking the measures necessary to stop the war, the people would condemn the un.

But the problem has nothing to do with the UN humanitarian workers, with the UN Development Corporation, with all those of UN that are peacekeepers and sacrificing their lives like UN humanitarian workers to protect people. The problem is with the Security Council. But because people sometimes do not distinguish, the UN pays the price of the lack of legitimacy and the lack of effectiveness of the Security Council. And so the reform of the Security Council is, I think, absolutely essential. It is difficult.

The resistances are high. Again, it's a question of power. Those have the power, are reluctant to lose that power. But it is absolutely essential to reform the Security Council. And I think I'm the first Secretary General that has been repeatingly saying that the Security Council needs to be reformed before the Secretary Generals would tend to say, well, this is not our competence.

It's competent of member states, it's really competence of member states. But I am the first to suffer the consequences of the fact that the Security Council is what it is today, a body totally not in line with the reality of today's world, now civil society. One of the things that I must tell you is sometimes difficult in our work with governments is to make governments understand that the UN and any other decision making process at national or global level only benefits if the civil society participates not only in, I mean, lateral events, but participates in the decision making processes. And we have been fighting a lot, and we did that in the context of the pact of the future. And we are doing it in the context of UN80 to create conditions for the civil society, but also for instance, the local and regional power to have a direct presence in the decision making processes.

And one thing I can tell you is that we did as much as we could in the pact of the future to associate the civil society and we are now in the unity. We are preparing a mega meeting of civil society in July to look into all the aspects of the UN 80 before key decisions are taken. So I am totally a believer that the participation of civil society in decision making processes is something that enriches those decision making processes and makes sure that some mistakes are not committed. Because the civil society has many times a much stronger understanding of what people think than those that are in government or in international organizations positions. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Secretary General and thank you colleagues, friends,

thank you.

We are about 15 minutes over the time for this meeting. So on your behalf allow me to thank again the Secretary General and to thank him actually for his time for listening, for responding, but most importantly for his leadership as our feminist in chief in the United Nations. We will miss you, Secretary General, in the next CSW and in the next civil society meeting. On next. There will be many civil society meetings until the end of the year.

Yes, but next csw we will miss you. But we know what you told us yesterday in the opening of csw, that you will continue the fight for women's and girls rights, for equality and for justice for all women and girls. So we thank you again very much for your leadership.

Thank you all again and wishing you all a very successful rest of CSW 70. All the best. And thank you very much again, Secretary General. Thank you.