The Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Rosy Akbar paid a courtesy visit to the new Executive Director for UN Women, Ms Sima Sami Bahous at her office in New York yesterday (27/03/22).
Minister Akbar is in New York for the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
The two leaders spoke on CSW and priorities, with this year’s theme being ‘Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes’.
They discussed the need for more cohesive approaches, and a more visible role of the Ministry of Women in this space, as repeated disasters meant that women were being repeatedly challenged with differentiated impacts. Recovery and economic empowerment were also discussed extensively in this regard and UN Women is keen to expand support in this area.
The focus of the discussions in this meeting included Gender Based Violence as this is an area of concern for UN Women and the National Women’s Machinery in Fiji. Ms Bahous recognised that Fiji has one of the best normative frameworks in the developing world. However, it was agreed that despite this, Fiji does have exceptionally high rates of GBV. Minister Akbar took the time to brief Ms Bahous on the progress of the National Action Plan on Preventing Violence against all Women and Girls which UN Women has supported.
The two leaders also had discussions on some of the regional challenges and perspectives.