Beijing+30 and the CSW Process: Advancing Gender Equality Together - Opening Remarks by RC for Online session for all UN staff in Türkiye

It is a pleasure to be with you today. I thank Result Group 2, chaired by UN Women Türkiye, and our UN Women Regional Office colleagues for bringing us together. More importantly, thank you for joining and for contributing your perspectives to this shared space. This is the first of several online sessions on gender equality, and I look forward to continuing these conversations with you in the months ahead.

This year we mark 30 years since the Beijing Platform for Action, still the most ambitious global agenda for gender equality. Today’s session connects that global vision to our work here in Türkiye, across operations, programmes, and coordination.

Gender equality is not only a standalone goal in the 2030 Agenda as SDG 5, but also a driver of progress across all SDGs. Here in Türkiye, the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework is our primary instrument for delivering on this agenda. I am pleased that gender equality is embedded both as a cross-cutting principle and as a standalone outcome in the UNSDCF 2026-2030, reflecting the UNCT’s leadership commitment to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.

At the global level, the Commission on the Status of Women remains the main accountability platform for Beijing Platform for Action. Türkiye’s Beijing+30 national report highlights important progress, but also areas where challenges remain. As the UN, we are committed to working alongside national partners to help close these gaps. At the country level, tools such as the UNCT-SWAP Gender Equality Scorecard and the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan ensure that our commitments are not just aspirational, they are measurable and actionable. These frameworks reflect our collective accountability as a UN system in Türkiye, which is monitored internally and by Member States, including through ECOSOC (for example, the QCPR monitoring framework and annual reporting on implementation of the gender mainstreaming resolution).

Every one of us, regardless of whether we work in humanitarian response, development programming, policy, or operations, has a role in ensuring the UN in Türkiye strategically addresses pushbacks on gender equality and women and girls’ rights through multistakeholder engagement, and intentionally building an enabling environment through joint activities that result in the reversal of systemic gender inequality and advance the rights of all women and girls. [NG1] This session is an opportunity to reflect on how our daily work connects to Beijing+30, to the CSW process, and to our UNSDCF commitments.

Let us use today’s dialogue to reaffirm that gender equality is everyone’s responsibility, not just the domain of specialists, and to recommit keeping the promise of Beijing, here in Türkiye and beyond.

Thank you once again for your engagement. I look forward to the discussion and to how we, together, can accelerate progress for all women and girls.