Latin America Making Important Progress
The head of the United Nations Development Programme (http://content.undp.org/go/newsroom/2009/november/undp-administrator-visits-chile.en) has spotlighted the slow global progress towards reducing gender inequality and violence against women on the first day of a three-day official visit to Chile.
Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator, met President
Michelle Bachelet and Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez
Amuntategui yesterday in Santiago, as well as with UN
Resident Representatives and Resident Coordinators across
Latin America, who have gathered in the Chilean capital for
their annual meeting.
Addressing that meeting, Miss
Clark said Latin America was on track to achieve many of the
Millennium Development Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/), the set of social
and economic target that the world’s countries agreed to
try to reach by 2015.
She noted that the region
remained on track even to meet the target for reducing
extreme poverty – halving the proportion of people who
live on less than $1 a day – despite the current global
recession, the impact of climate change and high food and
fuel prices.
But Miss Clark said that, worldwide,
progress towards those MDGs relating to the needs of status
of women has been slower.
“In this region UNDP has
been very active in addressing challenges related to gender
inequality, including violence against women and the need
for better balance between work and family life,” she
added.
“I believe it will be critical for gender
analysis to be applied in the preparations for the 2010
high-level MDG review next year at the UN General Assembly.
All development stakeholders need to become more aware of
how attending to women’s needs will help achieve a wide
range of development
goals.”
ENDS