UN official at IPU forum urges investment to protect women’s rights, cites campaign reaching 25,000

A United Nations official speaking at the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Forum of Women Parliamentarians urged governments and multilateral institutions to boost financing and international cooperation to protect and advance women’s rights, saying recent outreach and survey work shows persistent barriers to leadership.

The official said she launched Women Rights for All in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that a related outreach campaign reached 25,000 women in 185 countries. “What they told us was powerful,” the official said, adding that 85% of respondents identified as advocates for women’s rights and 60% believe women’s leadership will grow in the next decade.

Those surveyed, the official said, named mental-health strains, unpaid care responsibilities, insecurity and exclusion from power as persistent barriers to women’s participation. “We must connect movements, share strategies, and turn commitments into action,” she said, calling for broader alliances and partnerships that include men as partners rather than bystanders.

The speaker framed the appeals amid what she described as “a backlash against gender equality” and urged targeted investments for least developed and low-income countries. She said the United Nations is stepping up through its gender acceleration action plan and a related clarion call, which she described as a roadmap to dismantle barriers and drive change.

The remarks also marked what the official called 40 years of the IPU Forum of Women Parliamentarians and, she said, 30 years since the Beijing Declaration. She closed by urging collective effort: “Let’s lead together. Let’s rise for all.”