Mr. Chairman
Excellencies, 
Distinguished delegates,

Today we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most visionary and transformative global agenda for the achievement of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.

We are here to signal the transformational systems changes and higher ambition to accelerate the realization of gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls, in the frame of the 2030 Agenda.

Since the adoption of the Beijing Conference, the Republic of Moldova has made significant progress at the national level in advancing women’s rights and gender equality. Particularly, through enacting specific legislation, renewing policy frameworks and establishing national mechanisms.

The Comprehensive National Strategy on Gender Equality has been adopted, considerable work has been done in amending the legislation to strengthen prevention, protection and prosecution of all forms of violence against women.

Alongside, the adopted National Development Strategy “Moldova 2030”, which follows the implementation of SDGs integrates the Gender Equality perspective in all its priority areas.  

These and other efforts invested in advancing gender equality by the Government of the Republic of Moldova have been acknowledged in the context of Beijing +25 review, the achieved progress being evidenced through the World Economic Forum’s (Global Gender Gap) Report, where the Republic of Moldova has improved its score.

Accordingly, during the last years more women have been participating in leadership and decision making at the national and local level; maternal mortality ratio has decreased and the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel has increased over the past decade.

Inter alia, women representation also improved reaching 25.7% in the Parliament and Government and 36% in the local governments.

Despite these achievements, major gaps and challenges remain. In particular, many women and girls, such as Roma women, women from rural areas, and those living with HIV, continue to experience various forms of discrimination. 

We also have to recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating the pre-existing inequalities and is threatening to halt or reverse the gains of decades of continuous national efforts.

And for this reason, the Republic of Moldova fully concurs with the UN Secretary General’s calls to consider gender equality implication in the COVID recovery actions, and to put women and girls at the center of the recovery efforts.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that the Republic of Moldova stands ready to further contribute to the Beijing+25 process.

We are convinced that achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is an essential prerequisite to building up “The Future We Want and the UN we need”.

Thank you.