Few voices of women heard at UN
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NEW YORK (AP) — With cascading crises casting a pall over the proceedings at this year’s United Nations General Assembly, Slovakian President Zuzana âaputová had this reminder on the first day of debate: “We cannot save our planet if we leave
out the vulnerable — the women, the girls, the minorities.”
But gender parity at the world’s preeminent forum of leaders still seems far out of sight. Eight women are set to speak at the U.N. General Assembly on Friday. Just five women spoke across the first three days of the summit.
On Friday, three vice presi- dents and five prime ministers — including Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina and New Zealand’s Jacinda Arden — took the rostrum or give their address in a prerecorded video.
“As the first female president in the history of my country, the burden of expec- tation to deliver gender equal- ity is heavier on my shoul- der,” said Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president of Tanzania. When it comes to such equality, she said, “”COVID-19 is threatening to roll back the gains that we have made,”
Hassan was the lone woman to address the General Assembly on Thursday.
Despite those 13 women making up less than 10% of speakers over the first four days, the 13 represent an increase from last year, when just nine women spoke over the course of the session. There are also three more female heads of state or heads of government — 24 — than there were at this point in 2020.
“There can be no democra- cy, no security and no devel- opment without one-half of the humankind,” Estonia President Kersti Kaljulaid said Wednesday, also underscor- ing women’s vulnerability in society.
The theme of vulnerability has been at the forefront during a week haunted by the ever-looming specters of climate change, coronavirus and conflict. Most of the speeches have taken on the tenor of pleas issued at the precipice, batting away the summit’s theme of “building resiliency through hope.”
Dire predictions were not limited to the General Assembly. At a U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday, the high-level officials urged stepped-up action to address the security implications of climate change and make global warming a key part of all U.N. peacekeeping operations. They said warming is making the world less safe, pointing to Africa’s conflict- plagued Sahel region and Syria and Iraq.
Vice President Isatou Touray of Gambia, located in the Sahel, highlighted what many African nations have long called another deficit in inclusion: the powerful Security Council itself, which she called “one of the last holdouts of reform.”
