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STORY: UN / CIVIL SOCIETY TOWNHALL
TRT: 02:40
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 13 MARCH 2024, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, United Nations Headquarters
13 MARCH 2024, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, Trusteeship Council Chamber
3. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“At our current rate, 340 million women and girls will still be living in extreme poverty by 2030, and we cannot allow this to happen.”
4. Med shot, Secretary-General, speakers
5. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Some countries are seeing decades of progress on gender equality reversed and repealed. Around the world, women’s rights are under attack, civic space is being squeezed, and women’s rights defenders face violent threats for daring to speak up for justice. Afghanistan is the most egregious example.”
6. Med shot, Secretary-General, speakers
7. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“The conflicts raging around the world are catastrophic for women and girls – as we have seen all too clearly in the past year and more.”
8. Med shot, Secretary-General, speakers
9. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Populists and demagogues are attacking women’s freedoms and proclaiming so-called “traditional” values. But traditions like the oppression of women and girls should stay where they belong – in the past. The women of my generation did not win the fight for their rights, only to see their daughters and granddaughters fight the same battles.”
10. Med shot, Secretary-General, speakers
11. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“There is a serious danger that discrimination is being built into the algorithms on which AI is based, which would entrench bias into activities as important as recruitment, urban planning, and medical imaging for decades to come to the detriments of the rights of women. Governments, civil society, the tech industry, and others must come together to bridge the digital gender divide and ensure women make their full contribution to digital technology at all levels.”
12. Wide shot, participants
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Sima Bahous, Executive Director, UN Women:
“We need well-resourced women's organizations to address the backlash against women and girls, and we need to push back against the pushback.”
14. Wide shot, participants
Secretary-General António Guterres said, “The women of my generation did not win the fight for their rights, only to see their daughters and granddaughters fight the same battles.”
Speaking today (13 Mar) at a town hall meeting with civil society representatives on the sidelines of the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), Guterres said that at the current rate, 340 million women and girls will still be living in extreme poverty by 2030.
He also said, “Some countries are seeing decades of progress on gender equality reversed and repealed. Around the world, women’s rights are under attack, civic space is being squeezed, and women’s rights defenders face violent threats for daring to speak up for justice. Afghanistan is the most egregious example.”
Guterres stressed that the conflicts “raging around the world are catastrophic for women and girls – as we have seen all too clearly in the past year and more.”
According to the Secretary-General, this includes: Reports of rape and the trafficking of women in Sudan; Accounts of sexual violence and indications of sexualized torture during the terror attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel – as recently identified in a United Nations report; Testimonies of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees, as set out in the same report; the decimation of maternity services in Gaza, where women and children reportedly make up more than two-thirds of the tens of thousands of people killed.
He stressed, “Populists and demagogues are attacking women’s freedoms and proclaiming so-called “traditional” values. But traditions like the oppression of women and girls should stay where they belong – in the past.”
He also said, “There is a serious danger that discrimination is being built into the algorithms on which AI is based, which would entrench bias into activities as important as recruitment, urban planning, and medical imaging for decades to come to the detriments of the rights of women. Governments, civil society, the tech industry, and others must come together to bridge the digital gender divide and ensure women make their full contribution to digital technology at all levels.”
UN Women Executive Director, Sima Sami Bahous, who moderated the meeting, said, “We need well-resourced women's organizations to address the backlash against women and girls, and we need to push back against the pushback.”
