Authorities Value Progress on the Achievement of Gender Equality and Women’s Rights in the Region

Ministers and authorities on women’s affairs valued the progress made on achieving gender equality and women’s rights in the region during the closing session of the fifty-seventh meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which concluded today at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile.

The regional meeting came to a close with speeches by Mariella Mazzotti, Director of the National Women’s Institute (INMUJERES) of Uruguay, in her role as president of the Presiding Officers of the Conference, and Mario Cimoli, ECLAC’s acting Deputy Executive Secretary.

During the meeting, the countries approved the Regional Fund in Support of Women’s and Feminist Organizations and Movements, the general aim of which is to support the development of projects that seek to contribute to achieving gender equality, women’s autonomy and the realization of their rights in all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

At the gathering, which was inaugurated on Monday, July 30, the authorities also approved a draft agreement in which they highlighted the efforts deployed by the region’s countries to apply the Montevideo Strategy for Implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda within the Sustainable Development Framework by 2030 and its contribution as a tool for strengthening synergies between sustainable development plans, gender equality policies and budgets.

They also reaffirmed the need to establish shared international standards for the care, prevention, protection, access to justice and reparation of women, girls, boys and adolescents who are victims of violence, and they stressed the importance of comprehensive work, inter-institutional coordination and the territorialization of initiatives.

“This was a very fruitful meeting. We have provided very substantive elements for deepening women’s autonomy in all its complexities,” said Mariella Mazzotti, adding that “the achievement and advancement of women’s rights has a lot to do with the struggles of social movements.”

Mario Cimoli, meanwhile, reinforced ECLAC’s commitment to and participation in the process of full implementation of the Montevideo Strategy in the region and underscored the cross-cutting nature of the aspiration of gender equality throughout the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Upon concluding, the countries agreed to approve the road map for the preparatory process ahead of the Fourteenth Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will be held in November 2019 in Santiago, Chile.

They also committed to participating actively in the three subregional preparatory meetings that will take place between May and July 2019 at ECLAC’s headquarters in Santiago and at the Commission’s subregional headquarters in Mexico and Port of Spain, respectively.

Along with this, they agreed to hold the fifty-eighth meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women on January 22-23, 2019 at ECLAC’s headquarters in Chile.