President calls for global focus on gender equality

Ireland has further steps to take to ensure women are treated equally in society but gender equality worldwide must be a priority of our foreign policy, President Michael D Higgins has said.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the President also said women's rights globally are "under increasing threat from extremist groups who seek to enslave rather than empower women".

Mr Higgins was participating in a session called ‘Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment’. Others taking part in the session included German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Francois Hollande and Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Mr Higgins said, despite progress made over the past 20 years, gender inequality “remains the most persistent and prevalent form of human rights violation”.

“While Ireland recognises that there are areas in which we have further to go in achieving equality for women in our own country, Ireland has made gender equality a priority area of our foreign policy, but our strategies now will be, I know, all the more robust because of our new universal commitment,” the President said.

He said there is a need to renew commitments made in the Beijing declaration on women’s rights in 1995.

“At a time when women’s rights are under increasing threat from extremist groups who seek to enslave rather than empower women, there is a compelling need to renew the collective commitment made in Beijing twenty years ago and to consider more deeply what remains to be done if we are to achieve the full enjoyment of women’s rights,” Mr Higgins said.

The General Assembly saw 193 world leaders commit to 17 Sustainable Development Goals designed to end extreme poverty and hunger, fight inequality and injustice, and combat climate change by 2030. The global goals replace the Millennium Development Goals and Ireland, along with Kenya, was a co-facilitator of intergovernmental talks that led to the agreement.

Mr Higgins said gender equality must be seen as a key element of the agreement’s agenda.

However, the President said: “We should not have to wait 15 years to end violence against women and girls.”

“We must all approach this issue with humility and openness. While Ireland recognises that there are areas in which we have further to go in achieving equality for women in our own country, Ireland has made gender equality a priority area of our foreign policy, but our strategies now will be, I know, all the more robust because of our new universal commitment.”

Ireland has used its position on the UN Human Rights Council to take “every opportunity to highlight the right of all girls in every country to quality education”.

“We have also emphasised the centrality of promoting women’s participation in decision-making at all levels and the importance of eradicating harmful practices, especially female genital mutilation.

“Any paradigm of gender equality as being the gift of men, given either generously or reluctantly, has always missed, and will always miss, the point. Gender equality is a right achieved and not a gift.

“Gender equality cuts across all areas and arrangements in social, economic and trade must not be such as will impact on the achievement of gender equality. They must instead assist in its achievement.”