At the Commission on the Status of Women's annual meeting opening session, Undersecretary-General Sima Bahous stated how with every passing day the ongoing war is damaging the lives, hopes and futures of Ukrainian women and girls. Empowering women in dealing with climate change is the priority of the annual two-week meeting that is currently underway. Bahous added how climate change also hits women the hardest, with rural women and young girls who would miss school or walk farther to fetch water in times of drought as well as older women who lack access to finance.
Bahous, who is also the Executive Director for UN Women, went on to highlight how the war between two wheat and oil-producing nations threatening food security and access to essential services globally is bound to impact women and girls the hardest.
The chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Gladys Acosta Vargas, in light of the war in Ukraine—which has affected countless civilians, rendering them all, including women and children without a home—urged for peace efforts and fewer hostilities to ensure equal participation of women. Apart from the impact of the war on women, Vargas added how the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention away from the climate crisis and the threat of gender-based violence that women and girls face globally. While this doesn’t stop climate change from progressing as rapidly as it is, the subsequent disruption of natural resources exacerbates gender-based violence. She added how the committee, which monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, has also noticed an alarming increase in attacks, threats, harassment and killings of women from Indigenous communities defending their environmental, land or territorial rights.
Both Bahous and Vargas were joined by Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who pointed out how the world, as a result of millennia of patriarchy, is still male-dominated and continues to exclude women and prevents the female voice from being heard. He added how factors like climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity and the Ukraine war affects women and girls in the greatest ways. He said that environmental crises and extreme weather like droughts and floods disproportionately affect the nutrition, incomes and livelihoods of women farmers.
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