Walk Beside Us

We have much to celebrate as we introspect on the gains of the past three decades in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment.  We applaud the UN – and your predecessors in this august assembly – for having provided the space for women to gather globally, for listening to our voices, and responding to our various calls for your collective action for the empowerment of women throughout the world.  We particularly appreciate your role – sometimes willing and sometimes reluctant! – in helping us create the first global norm structures and mechanisms for empowering women and advancing gender equality: viz., CEDAW, the Beijing Platform, the Cairo Plan of Action, the CSW, and the ratification of women’s rights within the human rights framework.