UN Women Executive Board – First Regular Session 2023
13 February 2023
Statement of Italy delivered by the Permanent Representative, Ambassador Maurizio Massari
Thank you, Mr. President.
Firstly, I wish to express Italy’s deepest sympathy for the tragic loss of lives in Turkiye and Syria caused by the earthquake and our full support to those working at these very hours to continuing saving lives, including those of many women and children.
Mr. President,
Italy is honored to serve as Vice President of the UN Women Executive Board under your leadership and in cooperation with the distinguished Bureau.
I wish to express our full support to our Executive Director, Sima Bahous, and thank her for her opening statement and for her key engagement with the Board.
UN Women mission and action along its triple mandate remains crucial in all regions of the world. From Afghanistan to Ukraine, from Sub-Saharan Africa to South-East Asia, fragility and insecurity have increased and exposed too many women and girls to unacceptable violence, discrimination, lack of access to political, social and economic rights and opportunities, services and protection. These are unacceptable practices which all Governments must actively work to end, not to promote or condone.
Against this background, it’s therefore necessary to accelerate action for women and girls, also looking at the next CSW and in the year of the SDG Summit.
In order to do so, we also need to further improve UN Women’s action and focusing on impact.
It is encouraging to note the growing financial support and the solid institutional performance, as stated by the latest Report of the Board of Auditors.
We encourage the Executive Director and the Management to further reflect on how UN Women can improve impact and programme-delivery on the ground and, in this regard, we welcome any highlight from the ED on next steps or promising plans for this year. We also welcome improved partnerships, both within the UN System and also with the International Financial Institutions, as we will hear more during the course of this Board.
In this regard, I also recall Italy’s partnership with UN Women as implementing actor of selected programs in Africa in the context of the “Team Europe Approach”.
Mr. President,
last year already Italy had increased by 20% its core contribution to UN Women. Now, I am pleased to announce that for this beginning of the year Italy has already decided to provide an additional financial contribution of 2.4 million euro to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women – administered by UN Women – and to allocate additional resources to ongoing projects in Africa and the Middle East. This support will be additional to existing programming and to this year’s core contribution to come, confirming our increased trend in quality funding and our concrete and full commitment for women and girls.
I thank you.
