Joint Statement UN WOMEN Executive Board

Madam President,

I deliver this statement on behalf of Côte d’Ivoire, Panama, Poland, Tajikistan, and my own country, Sweden.

We express our deep appreciation to all those who enabled the field visit of the Bureau of the Executive Board to Moldova and Ukraine, especially to the Executive Board Secretariat and its Director Jean-Luc Bories as well as the Country Offices’ Directors, Dominika Stojanoska and Sabine Freizer in Moldova and Ukraine respectively, and to their teams. We are also grateful to have been joined by Belén Sanz Luque, the newly appointed Regional Director of UN-Women for Europe and Central Asia, and we extend our best wishes to her in her new role.

We commend UN-Women for their work carried out in both countries, setting an example of how to effectively deliver on its triple mandate, and make gender equality not just an objective in itself, but also a cross-cutting priority of the national programmes serving the overarching goal of achieving the SDGs, and SDG5 in particular.

We thank for the opportunity to engage with stakeholders, from the highest government officials to local authorities, NGOs and individual beneficiaries of UN-Women-funded and supported projects. Wherever we went, we heard words of appreciation and expectations for further cooperation with UN-Women and UN family at large.

We experienced first-hand that UN-Women is an indispensable partner for the increased economic empowerment of women, their participation in political life, concerted actions to combat and prevent gender-based violence, as well as an important ally for the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. UN-Women country offices in both countries visited are active, visible and valued members of UN Country Teams, ensuring that gender equality is present in the activities and strategies of all agencies and programmes.

We pay respect to brave women of Moldova and Ukraine, who, despite numerous economic and social challenges, military conflict and its implications, show resilience and determination in pursuing of full, equal and meaningful participation in the economic and political life of their countries.

We commend the governments of Moldova and Ukraine for their tireless efforts to implement SDGs for the economic and social betterment of their citizens and for paying special attention to the needs of women and girls in their policies. We encourage them to continue to do so, and to further benefit from the presence and activities of UN-Women in their respective countries.

While we found that the triple mandate and thematic areas of work were well implemented in both countries, the delegation has the following general recommendations:

1. There is a need for HQ to engage in deeper reflection on how UN-Women can better leverage its triple mandate, possibly through a global consultation,with involvement of Member States in this discussion.
2. Part of the UN-Women mandate is its humanitarian role. Although it is already performing well, we recommend more efforts to better position its role within the UN Humanitarian family, ensure adequate capacities at the country level, and take an active role in HQ discussions around the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus.
3. On coordination, the delegation believes that the coordination mandate of UN-Women could benefit from having a clear cooperate definition of expectations on delivery on regional and country office levels. This could be clarified through global guidelines made available to all country representatives in consultation with the Executive Board.
4. Finally, although results and outputs were visible at the country level, there is a need to ensure clearer linkages and reporting on how these contribute to global development standards and commitments, particularly SDG5, and the realization of the Agenda 2030.

The field visit has proven to be one of the most efficient tools of governance and oversight of the Executive Board. The interaction with UN-Women and its beneficiaries on the ground enabled the Executive Board Bureau members to better understand them and more efficiently perform their duties.

Thank you.