CSW68 concludes with UN Women welcoming the adoption of robust blueprint to end women’s poverty.

The 68^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68), held 11-22 March 2024, delivered robust commitments by UN Member States to strengthen financing and institutions to eradicate women’s and girls’ poverty.                                               (Photo UN Women/Ryan Brown).

Globally, 10.3 per cent of women live in extreme poverty today, according to the report presented by the UN Secretary-General to the Commission, and progress towards ending poverty needs to be 26 times faster to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

The outcome document from CSW68 (or Agreed Conclusions) recognizes that women and girls living in poverty become ‘shock absorbers’ in times of crisis, and that further efforts are needed to increase resources to address women’s and girls’ poverty.

* The Commission called for reforms to enable countries to mobilize and invest resources in gender equality.

* The Agreed Conclusions also recommend mobilizing financial resources from public and private sources, strengthening the international financial architecture, ensuring a gender lens in national budgeting processes, and preventing regressive taxation that disproportionately impacts women and girls with low or no income.

* The outcome document also notes that official development assistance must be increased to address women’s and girls’ poverty.

* The Commission also called for the implementation of gender-responsive economic and social policies, including increased women’s representation, leadership and participation in economic institutions, enforcing core labour standards to ensure equal pay for work of equal value, and implementing policies to support women-owned businesses.

* Engaging and financing women’s organizations is another key recommendation.

* The Agreed Conclusions also call to strengthen national capacities to collect and use disaggregated data on multidimensional poverty, and to adopt new development strategies towards sustainable economies.

* The Commission also adopted a resolution on HIV-AIDS led by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), which calls to increase investment in gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the HIV-AIDS response.

Full report at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-release/2024/03/un-women-welcomes-the-adoption-of-robust-blueprint-to-end-womens-poverty

*Attention is now turning to next year’s 30^th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action. The 69^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) will take place from 10 to 21 March 2025 in New York.

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