United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women
First Regular Session of 2014, UN Women Executive Board
Agenda Item 2: Evaluation
Madam President,
Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Maldives it its capacity as a Member of the Executive Board of UN Women. My Delegation wishes to congratulate our distinguished colleague, the Permanent Representative of Uruguay on his election as the President, as well as you and the Bureau on your election to lead our deliberations of this Session. I wish to commend the members of the outgoing President and Bureau for their dedicated work during the past year. Let me also record our appreciation to the Executive Director of UN Women for the leadership and dedicated work undertaken during the year that contributed to the enhancement of women all over the world.
Madam President,
Women empowerment and gender equality are priorities areas for the Maldives and will continue to be a flagship issues for the Maldives in all areas of our work. We have been able to particularly highlight that women’s rights are an integral part of human rights throughout our term in the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The Maldives welcomes the Thematic Evaluation on the Contribution of UN-Women to Increasing Women’s Leadership and Participation in Peace and Security and in Humanitarian Response. Women's leadership and participation is central to advancing peace and security as well as gender equality goals. In this regard it is promising to see that one of the conclusions of the evaluation is that UN-Women is now better equipped to engage with United Nations-wide processes in support of peace and security at the global level.
The Maldives also welcomes the recommendations made in the UN-Women Management Response to the thematic evaluation on the contribution of UN-Women, to increase women’s leadership and participation in peace and security and humanitarian response. In this regard, the considerable amount of work being done regarding the intergovernmental engagements in the global and regional level is especially encouraging. As recommended in the evaluation, joint programming and collaboration with other United Nations entities on peace and security and humanitarian response needs to be increased. We welcome the stepping up of UN-Women's engagements with regional peace and security institutions and going beyond the current strategy of focusing on the Security Council and the Peacebuilding Commission.
Madam President,
UN Women is working with country teams around the world, including the Maldives to intensify efforts and ensure gender equality. The evaluation has identified limitations and made recommendations to remedy them. Even though the transition to UN-Women has increased the strategic presence, leadership and influence of the entity at the global level, in-country influence of UN Women, is lacking. Harnessing national best practises and creative and innovative ideas will strengthen the work of the entity. The Strategic Plan for 2014-2017 will hopefully provide a much stronger foundation in this regard.
Several countries have already seen the effectiveness of UN-Women in enhancing women’s participation in several spheres such as participation in peacebuilding and post conflict reconstruction and women’s organizations to political, legislative, policy and planning process. UN-Women has led to fostering multilateral partnerships transnationally.
The Maldives reaffirms its full commitment to the strategic plan and its realization and in the full application of the principle of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Maldives will recognise the conclusions included in the Thematic Evaluation on the Contribution of UN-Women to Increasing Women’s Leadership and Participation in Peace and Security and in Humanitarian Response.
As a recipient country, the Maldives currently enjoys fruitful engagement with UN-Women. On-going programs include increasing the participation of women in political life as well as gender sensitive budgeting at a time of austerity. The Maldives has a profound understating of the value of these programs and recognizes the need to deepen and broaden UN-Women’s donor base. The Maldives has been proud to be among the list of contributing countries, and is proud to continue our symbolic gesture toward demonstrating our long-term commitment and support for the work of UN-women. Although symbolic in nature, our contribution over the past few years is purely to demonstrate our firm commitment to the cause of advancing the empowerment of women and gender equality around the world. We call upon and encourage more capable and wealthy countries to come forward with their generous assistance to the UN Women to facilitate in its noble tasks ahead.
Madam President,
It is an honour for the Maldives to serve on the Executive Board of UN-Women and we remain ready to extend our full support to you and fellow members of the Board in carrying out the tasks ahead of us.
Thank you Madam President!
