Remarks at National Commemoration of International Women’s Day

Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Uganda

The Minister of Gender Labour and Social Development

All Ministers and senior Government officials

Heads of Diplomatic Missions

Members of Parliament , Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are all lucky to be here together to celebrate International Women’s Day. I am delighted to be with you here today, representing our United Nations family in Uganda. I express our warmest thanks to the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development and the National Organising Committee for a great job in organizing this lovely commemoration.

Your Excellency, the UN system in Uganda recognizes and applauds the Government of Uganda for her commitments to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, as well as her commitment to combating climate change and its impacts in Uganda. This includes putting in place laws, policies and frameworks – including the National Development Plan III, the Uganda Gender Policy and sectoral policies which prioritize women and girl’s empowerment. Congratulations on all progress made.

This year’s theme “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow” recognizes the catalytic role that advancing gender equality can have on our overall development agenda, including on the ever more urgent climate change adaptation, mitigation, and response.

Yet, even as we will continue the work started, the reality is women still enjoy less than their rightful share of the overall development progress we are making globally and nationally – across all SDG areas – in poverty reduction, education, health, decent jobs, etc. Great inequality remains across board, with women faring less well.

And when crises hit – we have just had 2 years of the covid pandemic, we increasingly experience climate related disasters, there are wars in our neighborhood and elsewhere, and other calamities – the evidence is women tend to suffer more negative setbacks towards the enjoyment of their share of the national and global progress towards development.

The SDG framework offers an inspiring and inclusive vision of the future: a world free from poverty, inequality, injustice, and discrimination; and a healthy planet for present and future generations. It takes a holistic approach to addressing these challenges and prioritizes gender equality as both a standalone goal and a cross-cutting one because we know that without significant progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment, the SDGs will not be achieved.  And as the national development plan is the national articulation of SDG implementation, we can draw the same conclusion that we need progress towards gender equality and empowerment for Uganda to achieve its own Vision 2040.

And then there is the money. For development to reach people, adequate financing is required so that commitments by governments and their leaders translate into action.

The 2030 Agenda commits stakeholders to work “for significant increase in investments to close the gender gap.” This is reiterated in the Addis Ababa Agenda for Action on Financing for Development, which commits development actors to new ways of thinking about financing for sustainable development – specifically urging not only greater financing, but also better tracking and reporting on public finance for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Despite this call for more money that is better targeted, global investment in this area is significantly lagging behind investment of most other goals – with some evidence suggesting that it is the third least supported SDG.

Globally, official development assistance (ODA) dedicated to gender equality has stalled around 4-5% and more than half of ODA (55%) is still gender-blind. Likewise, with private sector, while we celebrate the increased partnership and overall growth in commercial/blended finance for development – gender equality is a primary objective for only 1% and secondary objective for only 10% of such financing.

Somewhat mirroring this global picture, I understand the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD), charged with supporting Government efforts across all sectors and all levels on gender equality, is among the least well-funded ministries in Uganda. And within the same ministry, the Directorate of Women’s Affairs receives only about 1% of the total Ministry budget (FY2020/21). 

Of course, in an ideal world — and perhaps even more relevant in the current tighter fiscal spaces all Governments find themselves – the Ministry should be able to claim significant influence over the funds given to other Ministries which have the expressed aim to further national gender equality and empowerment goals. The programme approach and overall better cross-sector coordination mechanisms will help stretch current available funding towards this crucially important goal to yield more and better results.  

A world with gender equality, where women and men, boys and girls enjoy equal levels of the development progress being made and enjoy equally their human rights - a critical goal in itself. But gender equality is even more urgent now – especially following the pandemic and the slide back we have experienced – because it is an enabler, an accelerator, a catalyst towards National development outcomes in the first place.

And specific to today’s theme - there is growing evidence that women’s empowerment and advancing gender equality can accelerate progress to address climate change and can lead to more environmentally friendly and adaptive decision making at household and national levels. 

Today, as we commemorate the International Women’s Day, the United Nations in Uganda calls for intensified efforts to achieve gender equality and women empowerment and related financing – with much better tracking and reporting of the use of public finances. Without girls and women’s full participation in national development, our efforts to achieve middle income status will be affected.

We pledge to increase our support to efforts by the Government – including also by being better coordinated among UN agencies --- and also continue working with and supporting other relevant actors in order to advance gender equality and implementation of Sustainable Development Goals to achieve agenda 2030.

May 2022 yield great results in gender equality.

Happy International Women’s Day. 

Thank you.