Speech: Our job is clear and its urgency apparent

Speech: Our job is clear and its urgency apparent

Closing remarks by UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous to the Second Regular Session of the Executive Board

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[As-delivered]

Let me begin by congratulating the newly elected President, Ms. Zoraya del Carmen Cano Franco, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Panama to the United Nations, and the newly elected Vice-President, Mr. Michal Daniel Miarka, Deputy Permanent Representative of Poland to the United Nations. I very much look forward to working with them.

My thanks also to the other Vice-Presidents for your support and their efficient and clearly successful coordination within their regional groups. As well , my thanks go to hose who have expertly facilitated us: Ms. Marilyn Thompson from the Permanent Mission of Panama, Ms. Julie Lelek from the Permanent Mission of the United States, and Mr. Matthew Kelson from the Permanent Mission of Australia. The proof of their expertise is in the four substantive decisions we have adopted which we will now take forward.

I suspect many of you will share my impression that there has been a particularly substantive discussion this session. You have indeed been the critical friend we ask you to be. You have given us much to think about and much to do. We appreciate that greatly and need your guidance as much as ever with the many crucial priorities and tasks in the next 12 months in particular. I know you did all this while juggling and balancing many other demands on your time for which we are grateful.

I would like also recognize my colleagues, Nyaradzayi, Kirsi and their teams, our Regional Directors, colleagues in country and regional offices, and of course, Jean-Luc Bories and team who as ever kept our business smooth and efficient. I also would like to thank my team in the Executive Director's Office. I am in no doubt of how blessed I am with the team I am part of and privileged to lead.

I know many of you will leave this room and join your Delegations as you continue the critical negotiations on the Pact for the Future. Your task is not an easy one and there are multiple issues demanding your attention. But I will ask and expect of you all of you that the outcome you strive for and ultimately achieve places women and girls at its heart.

We owe women and girls, humanity overall, an ambitious forward-looking pact that will chart a successful course to 2030 and beyond.

It is my hope, also, that you bring this energy to CSW69, that you advocate and negotiate for a strong and ambitious Political Declaration, lifting up the outcomes of the Summit of the Future, and amplifying your support for a robust and responsive multilateral system that works for all women and girls, everywhere.

UN Women, as we always do with your support and guidance, will be the enabler, catalyst, convenor, advisor and advocate you expect us to be. We will be so as we review implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action.

We will, as you have asked us, do everything in our power to ensure that the true commemoration of the Declaration is through change, the achievement of its vision, acceleration, and that all of this occurs on the ground, bringing real change to the lives of women and girls. That is what we aspire to in the national Beijing review process and SDG5 review ahead of the High-level Political Forum next year.

We look forward to working with the newly elected President of the General Assembly, His Excellency, Philemon Yang and the President of ECOSOC His Excellency, Bob Rae, towards this end. That is why we are at your service to hold informals, support the CSW Bureau and this Executive Board however we can, and however you wish.

And yes, we know that ultimately much of this is a discussion of the choices we make with our resources. There is no acceleration without very different investment choices. The world rightly bemoans its challenges, not least in the halls of this multilateral institution.

But it does so while spurning through under-investment the benefits of that proven, unarguable, compelling gender dividend that offers us not only progress for women and girls and SDG5 but for the entire 2030 Agenda. And it is surely the litmus test for our efforts in the next 12 months whether our money is where our mouths are. It is surely what we will be held accountable for by those we serve.

For everything I ask of you, I recognize a corresponding call on us. My team and I have heard you loud and clear. If there is a lesson since our establishment it has been that for every milestone we pass there are many still ahead of us, that our progress and improvement as UN Women must be continuous in the face of the crucial mandate you gave us. What I ask of you, I embrace for us, and you will hold us accountable as you should. That includes the recommendations of the JIU report which we are working on as we speak.

This includes the recommendations on strengthening our coordination mandate. I heard from you also loud and clear. Please know that I am determined that this will be central to our new Strategic Plan. And by placing the Secretariat of the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan in my Office I hope you are left in no doubt as to my personal direct involvement in ensuring that we deliver.

I also appreciate our discussions on finances and resources, at a time when these are scarce. I thank those who make the case with us for financing UN Women in line with our mandate and the Strategic Plan you tasked us to carry out. We will continue to do our utmost to secure the amounts and kinds of resources we need to do what you asked us to do, but we need your support to do it. And we know that you in turn need us to deliver powerful results and communicate them effectively so that you can afford us that support.

What I would say is that as you make the case for us, let us be clear that UN Women is an unarguable success story. We are the third fastest growing entity in the UN system of the last decade plus, almost three times the size we were at establishment.

That we have absorbed and delivered in that context, all while hitting and exceeding delivery targets and consistent positive external audits, is a testament to our mandate. It speaks to the hard work and talents of our fullest leadership, our partners, our staff and of course this Executive Board. I would contend that we remain one of the best investments in town and I ask that you carry that message with you wherever it needs to be heard.

We have also taken to heart your feedback on cost recovery. We remain committed to fully implementing the policy and recovering all direct project costs in accordance with the policy.

The pace of our work is quickening, and I look forward to our next session together. At the First Regular Session 2025 we will continue our work on governance and oversight of the Executive Boards, while also considering new agenda items on organizational culture and anti-discrimination and risk management and discussing audit matters and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS Programme Coordinating Board meeting.

In the run up to the First Regular Session, we will also commence discussions and consultations around our next Strategic Plan. I look forward to engaging with you all on this. We already have some quite substantial ideas about the ways in which our next Strategic Plan can build even further on what we consider to be a very good current Strategic Plan. We anticipate an excellent collaboration with you as we seek to do so.

I thank you again for your support and the confidence you continue to show in us. You are not only where we go for guidance and support, you are also where we go to be energized- and where we come to be re energized, as in this Executive Board session. Every mandate in the UN system is crucial. But surely there is no mandate more central to human rights, to peace, to security, to development and to the Charter of the United Nations than that of UN Women. Surely no mandate asks more of us just as it offers the most for us.

And that is why there is surely no greater privilege than the one that we, in this room, share: to be called upon to deliver gender equality for women, for girls, for men and for boys, to achieve the gender equality dividend for us and our children, to unlock the aspirations of the Beijing Declaration and the 2030 Agenda. Our job is clear and its urgency apparent. We look forward to carrying it out with you, together.

I thank you.