<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Last Tuesday, the Council of Ministers authorized Spain's voluntary contribution of €4.5 million, for the 2025 financial year, to the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).</strong></h4> UN Women is the United Nations agency that develops programs, policies, and standards to uphold women's human rights and ensure that all women and girls reach their full potential. Its main objectives are to increase women's leadership and participation, end violence against women, involve women in all aspects of peace and security processes, enhance women's economic empowerment, and make gender equality a central consideration in national development planning and budgeting. UN Women, the Council of Ministers recalled, is primarily responsible within the United Nations system for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5 (gender equality), along with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and for mainstreaming the gender approach for the effective fulfillment of each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On May 12, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted the seminar "Financing Development with a Feminist Approach: Counting on Women," organized by the Carolina Foundation, the State Secretary for International Cooperation, and UN Women as part of the preparations for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, scheduled to take place in Seville from June 30 to July 3. The seminar was opened by the State Secretary for International Cooperation, Eva Granados, who stated that "the Government of Spain is a feminist government that places equality at the center of all its political action, both domestic and foreign." “Therefore, at both the political and technical levels, in Spain we are working to mainstream the gender perspective into all areas of the development financing agenda: from the reform of the international financial architecture to the design of financial instruments and gender-responsive budgeting,” she added. For her part, the director of the Carolina Foundation, Érika Rodríguez Pinzón, reported that “the purpose of development financing with a feminist approach is to mitigate the existing gaps between men and women in access to resources and opportunities, as well as to transform the structures that perpetuate inequality.” Likewise, María-Noel Vaeza, UN Women Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, emphasized that “resources allocated to development financing must effectively promote a care society with gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” The event was attended by prominent representatives from multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the OECD, the UNDP, ECLAC, CAF, and the SEGIB (Spanish Ministry of Finance), as well as cooperation agencies such as AECID and AGCID.
