This announcement was read today March 8 - International Women's Day - at a press conference at the United Nations:
Given that women compose the half of humanity and the inherent importance and relevance of women issues for the global progress, it is high time that such a world conference is convened, more so as the world is going through enormous changes in all fronts having both positive and other implications for women.
The President of the UN General Assembly, H.E. Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser and the Secretary-General of the United Nations H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon would like to jointly propose the convening of a Global Conference on Women by the United Nations in 2015, twenty years after the last women’s summit in Beijing.
Given that women compose the half of humanity and the inherent importance and relevance of women issues for the global progress, it is high time that such a world conference is convened, more so as the world is going through enormous changes in all fronts having both positive and other implications for women.
The President of the General Assembly and the Secretary-General hope that the international community in general would welcome this joint initiative. They also hope that the Member-States who have the final authority to convene the proposed conference would take the necessary step in that regard during the on-going 66th session of the General Assembly.
They believe that high point that the UN reached with the establishment of UN-Women in 2011 can be meaningfully substantiated with a global programme focusing on women and articulated at the Fifth Conference.
The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing which adopted in 1995 the current Forward-Looking Platform of Action was preceded by three such world conferences beginning in 1975 in Mexico City, in 1980 in Copenhagen and in 1985 in Nairobi, held in intervals of five years. The enthusiasm of civil society, particularly women’s organizations, for such a conference has added extra strength to the general support expected for the proposal.
The Assembly President and the Secretary-General believe that a world conference on women would do justice in looking closely not only at the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action but also at the emerging issues, in particular those relating to women and political participation, UNSCR 1325 related issues on women and peace & security, equal access to decent work and to decision-making, involvement of rural women and girls as well as aid effectiveness, food security, trafficking, drugs, migration, environment, climate change, information technology which impact on women in various ways at all levels. As a result, naturally these have implications for nations and societies as a whole. With their manifested complexities, all those areas need to be addressed in a holistic manner, benefitting from ever-widening potentials of global connectivity.
In all these, role and involvement of the young people, particularly women, would bring in an important dimension of intergenerational empowerment that did not get a deserving prominence in earlier conferences.
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Women of Spirit and Faith extends its gratitude to Jean Bolen for her decade of grassroots work to keep the spirit of a 5th Women's Conference alive at the UN.
