Chair,
Let me at the outset express our gratitude to the facilitator for her constructive and good-spirited facilitation of this important resolution, which helped us reach consensus.
Achieving gender equality is at the center of Norway’s domestic and foreign policy and fundamental in all our development efforts. This is because we see a direct link between social and economic development and increased opportunities available to women and girls, the promotion of their right to self-determination, and the furthering of their empowerment.
These priorities have been the backbone of our engagement in this resolution, as it will continue to be in our engagement in the follow-up of the 2030 Agenda in general. If we are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, gender equality must be at the heart of our efforts.
With this in mind, we welcome this resolution’s good additions that aligns language with the most ambitious commitments for gender equality which we agreed on in the 2030 Agenda.
We are also glad to see the highly topical inclusion of additions on sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Also, we have made progress by including equal pay for equal work or work of equal value, and we acknowledge investments in women, girls and adolescents as investments in our collective future and improved economies. In addition, in order to get there, we need the strategic partnerships of men and boys, and this is included as a valuable addition in the resolution.
We still have a long way to go, however, and we still need to give greater acknowledgement to remaining barriers to women’s equal participation and equality with respect to the same rights enjoyed by men.
In this regard, we regret that we were not able to include one of the key commitments from agenda 2030, reflected in target 5.6 - to ensure sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in line with ICPD, Beijing and the outcomes of their review conferences, which we consider highly relevant for this resolution.
We look forward to continuing to engage with all member states to move these issues forward and to build alliances in the fight for women’s rights, increased participation and to remove all the barriers to their fulfilment. These are the key issues on the road to achieving the SDGs.
Thank you.