Image: Participants, including UN Rep Bette Levy (centre), who helped organise the NY launch event

Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the historic Fourth World Conference on Women, where 189 governments adopted the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a visionary blueprint that set out steps to achieve women’s full and equal participation in all spheres of life.  In the run-up to this significant milestone, UN Women is inviting the world to engage in a global conversation about women’s rights and to imagine a world in which gender equality
and women’s empowerment is a reality, discussing gaps and obstacles and how to overcome them.  More about Beijing+20.

In this week’s SoroptiVoice blog, UN Rep Angelina Akhvlediani, one of our team in New York, reports from the New York launch event of the campaign.

On June 26th UN Women hosted an event at the Apollo Theater
and started a new campaign as part of Beijing +20:  
"Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity – Picture It!". The Executive
Director of the UN Women described this campaign as "a beginning of the
end of gender inequality".

It was a very inspirational event. Many speakers
has attended the Beijing gathering in 1995. They were able to
tell the audience where we, as a global society were in 1995 in relation
of women and health, women and education, women and public life, women and
poverty, and where we are now. 20 years ago 70% of girls worldwide attended
school, today 90% of them are in classrooms. But still, according to UNICEF, 57
million kids are not in school and a big majority of  them are
girls. 

1995 was the remarkable year to start addressing violence
against women. As one of the iconic speakers, women’s rights veteran Gloria
Steinem, said:  human rights are the bird with two wings. If one of
the wings is broken and weak, there is no way for the bird to fly!

 

Image: Angelina at the launch

 Every speaker had their own "turn" to
"picture" the world she or he wanted to live in. It was pleasant
to picture the world without violence against women and girls, or when
 all kids are able to go to school.

 Sitting in the side row I had my picture too: the
world where there will be no more need for women to fight against inequality,
violence, and poverty. The world where women’s effort will be use to find more
productive  ways of self-actualization! The world where Gloria Steinem’s
humanity birds will be able to fly high, very high….

For more information and photos of the event visit the UN Women facebook page or http://beijing20.unwomen.org. Poet and writer Carlos Gomez, one of SI’s panellists from our CSW58 discussion on men, boys and gender equality, also performed at the event. A video will be available soon from UN Women’s Beijing+20 website.