As the delegate of DR Congo at model united nation conference, the committee of UN Women, i’m required to write a position paper in regard to two topics:
A. Promoting the education of girls to empower women in politics and society
Gender inequality starts when female are young girls having less or no access to basic and primary education. UNESCO’s statistics show that of the 57 million out-of-school primary children around the world, 31 million are girls. This inequality, among many others, continues throughout their lives as girls grow up to become women and mothers, by being more exposed to sexual violence, suffering from discrimination in the workplace, if even accessing the workplace.
Supporting girls today for the collective well-being of tomorrow can be achieved if measures and policies tackle a wide variety of issues at the root of gender inequality. Such policies should address poverty and its particularly devastating effects on girls’ education, bullying, which is still mostly experienced by girls, regardless of the country’s development.
For the 2018 GIMUN Annual Conference, UN Women will address the issue of girls education and implications directly linked to women empowerment, through cooperation with national governments, regional agencies, and within the framework of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, with a particular emphasis on three of the seventeen sustainable development goals.
“The empowerment and autonomy of women and the improvement of their political, social, economic and health status is a highly important end in itself.’’ (UNFPA, 1994).
B. Ending all forms of violence against women in armed conflict
It is estimated by the United Nations that “close to ninety per cent of current war casualties are civilians, the majority of whom are women and children, compared to a century ago when ninety per cent of those who lost their lives were military personnel”. Violence against women can include many forms, in the situation of armed conflict, this threat could potentially come from the enemy or even “friendly” forces. Violence against women may happen at any time, but during armed conflicts, the general collapse of law and order leads to an increase in all forms of violence.
Resolution 1325, adopted by the United Nations Security Council in 2000, recognised that armed conflicts had a different impact according to the gender. Thus, addressing this issue is of extreme importance as it is now of utmost relevance as the level of armed conflicts in the world is one of the highest since World War II. This has been leading to high concentrations of women in these areas being extremely vulnerable to violence that may be inflicted upon them. The UN Women Committee shall discuss this issue to improve measures already in place to alleviate the issue and come up with innovative solutions to further provide safety and security to women in vulnerable areas, especially in areas of armed conflict