“At the current rate, UN Women is setting gender equality 300 years from now, as it is moving further and further away,” denounced Antonio Guterres in a speech at the opening of two weeks of debates in New York of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and two days away from International Women’s Day on March 8.
The head of the UN considered that the “rights of women were abused, threatened, violated throughout the world” and that “the progress made for decades was disappearing before our eyes”.
He took the example of Afghanistan, where the Taliban regained power in August 2021 and where “women and girls have been erased from public life”.
He did not name other countries but in “many places women’s sexual reproductive rights are being rolled back and girls who go to school are at risk of being abducted and assaulted.”
“The patriarchy strikes back. So do we. I am here to say loud and clear: the United Nations stands with women and girls everywhere,” the Secretary-General concluded.