THE DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL -- REMARKS AT THE OPENING PLENARY OF THE ‘WOMEN DELIVER’ CONFERENCE -- ‘Change Calls Us Here’

Excellencies,

Distinguished guests,

Sisters, women champions, young changemakers, and leaders,

It is an honour to speak to you today and I’m glad to be back in Australia.

My thanks to Aunty Di Kerr for the “Welcome to Country”, and to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, on whose land we gather.

I want to begin by paying my respects to Elders past and present, and to the First Nations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Māori and Pacific women in this room.

Ngoon godjin.

Friends,

We are gathered today - for the first time in the history of this Conference – in Oceania.

And let me say this: it is long overdue.

Securing the rights of women and girls is the world’s unfinished business, if anything, it is moving backward with new technologies amplifying misogyny and online violence.  

Women’s rights are human rights: non-negotiable, universal and essential for peace and prosperity.

Yet three decades after Beijing, thirty-one years after Cairo, we are still arguing with men over whether a woman’s body belongs to her.

That is the work we inherited, and that is the work that has brought more than five thousand of you to Naarm.

We are all here – civil society, governments, academia, grassroots organisations, women with disabilities, young people, members of the LGBTQI+ community - to move the women’s rights agenda forward.

This gathering…

…is the momentum and the muscle we need to keep the fight for women’s rights going….

…It is the chance to hear your voices and amplify them….

…It is the reminder that we have to fight to keep the ground we have won, and that there is a great deal more of it still to take, by using the tools and the mechanisms we have.

Because right now the world is in a mess more than a decade in the making, from Covid19, to conflicts and countless climate disasters.

And as ever, the weight of that mess lands on our shoulders.

The resources to respond to the challenge are shrinking, not growing.

The decade-long trend where development assistance for gender equality was on an upward trajectory, is coming to an end.

I was in Nigeria recently, and I went to see what the new “scramble for Africa” looks like on the ground, and it looks like artisanal mining.

Women and children with shovels, hauling loads that should not be on any human back.

Whole communities damaged and suffering so that their own minerals are extracted for foreign use.

And not only are they eking out a living, they are risking their lives by doing this against a backdrop of conflict and insecurity.

And that, I am afraid, is the pattern. Wherever the extraction is hungriest, wherever the conflict is sharpest, wherever the climate is cruelest, you will find women and girls carrying the weight of it.

Do I accept what I saw in Nigeria?

No, of course I don’t.

No more than I accept what is being done to women and girls elsewhere in the world, including in the Pacific.

That is why we stand here.

To bring visibility to it.

To amplify the voices that the world is tuning out.

And to call it out.

Nowhere is that clearer than here in the Pacific.  

You are suffering from multiple shocks caused by the climate crisis, and you are on the front line of the response. But you are not victims of climate change, but leading the solutions that the world urgently needs, so we need to listen to the Pacific.

This is the same fight: women and girls carrying the weight of a crisis they did not create.

And so we have to keep going.

Those pushing back against the rights of women, girls, and gender diversity are organised, they are well resourced, and they are playing the long game.

We will not cede this space, not an inch of it.

We need to take back ground from the people trying to drag it away.

You, the governments, have to back your commitments and then deliver on those promises with legislation.

You, civil society, have to push harder on holding power to account.

We, the United Nations will do what only the United Nations can do, which is to convene the world, defend the values and principles of the Charter, and continue to fight for human dignity, justice, and solidarity.

And together, all of us must act on those values and principles in every corner of the earth where they are being tested.

In a moment where multilateralism is under attack and the crises keep on coming, the United Nations is responding.

The Secretary-General's UN80 reform is about making the United Nations fit for the world we are in today.

We are proposing to bring UN Women and UNFPA together into a single entity delivering for women, girls, and youth.

On the ground, it could mean a presence in over one hundred and thirty countries.

It could mean a combined operational budget of around two point two billion US dollars.

And for civil society, it would mean a single entry point, with greater access and amplification of your message for your advocacy and rights work.

The savings could be redirected back into programming.

The bottom line is that it means a footprint that is broader, stronger and more impactful than we have had before.

That said, a bigger footprint on its own will not be enough.

We need to go further, faster, together.

So, you will see us push to strengthen our partnerships with civil society.

Gentlemen and ladies,

We are nowhere near done and the United Nations cannot do this without you.

We will not achieve the Sustainable Development Goals without the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and girls.

I will take what I hear in this room and bring it back to New York, and I will amplify your voices in the conversations happening there.

So, I urge you to keep the faith, keep showing up.

Change called us here, and now the rest is in our hands.

Thank you.

*****

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