Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, inaugurated the GWL Voices Dialogue meeting yesterday in Madrid, in which the role of women in the face of global challenges and in multilateral organizations was addressed and in which he warned that “it is time to that we have, 80 years later, a secretary general of the United Nations.”
“You are in a country that today is a world reference in equality policies, and whose Government proudly declares itself feminist,” declared Sánchez during the opening speech of the GWL Voices Dialogue meeting, which has been held since yesterday and until today at the Casa of America headquarters in Madrid and in which concrete responses to global challenges will be addressed from the perspective of women’s rights.
The event is organized jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Global Women Leaders (GWL), an organization made up of nearly seventy women leaders who have held senior positions in national governments or the United Nations and who have come together to advocate for a greater presence of women in positions of power.
Among the participants in the event are the president of Ethiopia, Sahle-Work Zewde, the former Chilean president Michele Bachelet, the former UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay, the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, the former director general of UNESCO Irina Bokova, the former Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra, the former Finnish President Tarja Halonen, the former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa (executive director of GWL), the former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Arancha González Laya or the former Secretary of State Cristina Gallach.
“This is a forum that advocates for the global leadership of women in multilateral organizations, in international organizations,” Pedro Sánchez recalled. In her opinion, the increase in women in these fields would foster “a more complete understanding of global problems,” would reinforce “the legitimacy of multilateral organizations at this time of erosion, precisely, of our multilateral order,” and would facilitate “the quality of decision-making in political processes” and “more lasting agreements, even in difficult peace processes.”
“However,” he continued, “to date, no woman has been elected Secretary General of the United Nations and there have only been four female presidents of the General Assembly compared to 70 male presidents.” “According to the 2023 Women in Multilateralism report, the main multilateral organizations have been led by men 88% of the time” and even today, “despite the progress that has been made, singularly led by the current Secretary General, António Guterres, only a third of organizations are led by a woman,” he lamented.
For this reason, he assured, the Spanish Government supports the GWL initiative “for a system of gender alternation in the election of the Presidency of the General Assembly” and the campaign of the same organization Madame Secretary-General, because “it is time to that we have a secretary general of the United Nations.” “Almost 80 years after its creation there can be no more excuses, it is time,” he said.
According to Sánchez, “Spain has been leading by example for years,” as demonstrated by the appointment of Nadia Calviño, “who was vice president of the government of Spain and was therefore part of the Executive during the last five years,” to the position of president of the Bank. Investment European. “It took more than sixty years and seven presidents for there to be a woman at the head of this institution,” he warned.
“At a time when women’s rights are in decline in many countries, my Government is committed to feminism as the backbone of its political action and deploys intense legislative and executive activity,” said Sánchez.
That commitment, she assured, is reflected in the one hundred million euros contributed by Spain “during the last three years to organizations that work for gender equality and also for sexual and reproductive rights, including UN Women and the Population Fund. of the United Nations.” “Likewise, it is manifested in our commitment to a feminist foreign policy, which was promoted precisely by a former Minister of Foreign Affairs who accompanies us, Arancha González Laya,” he added.
Meeting with Hillary Clinton
Subsequently, Sánchez met in La Moncloa with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with whom he spoke (in their second meeting in less than a year) about the climate emergency and the agreements reached at COP28, the fight for gender equality and the global geopolitical situation, marked by the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza. Furthermore, both reflected on the rise of reactionary movements and populism in Europe and the rest of the world and “the danger they represent for democracies,” as reported by Moncloa.
