Ashgabat, 8 March 2013

Dear colleagues,
 
Looking back over the past year, I am encouraged by what we have achieved in pursuit of gender equality and the empowerment of refugee women. On International Women’s Day, let us take a moment to celebrate the positive steps we have taken, both as an organization and within individual operations and teams. Yet in doing so, let us not forget that most people of our concern live far from a world in which women, girls, men and boys are treated equally and without discrimination. Our efforts must continue in order to make progress in this regard, one step at a time.
 
To mark this important day, the United Nations has adopted the theme 'A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women.' At the December 2011 Ministerial Meeting, I pledged to strengthen UNHCR’s commitment to address sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). All of us together have been working hard to realize this promise.

Country-specific SGBV strategies are currently being developed and implemented in 15 countries. Operations around the world have been carrying out new or expanded projects on SGBV prevention and response, sanitary materials and female genital mutilation. UNHCR is also developing internal capacity, improving data collection and analysis and strengthening its monitoring and evaluation of SGBV programs.
 
We are enhancing the way UNHCR and its partners prevent and respond to SGBV in ongoing emergencies, by establishing coordination mechanisms and reinforcing capacity in the field. With the widespread use of sexual violence as a weapon of war in conflicts all around the globe, these efforts are absolutely crucial to the realization of our protection mandate.
 
The promotion of gender equality is an integral component of UNHCR’s age, gender and diversity approach, and should inform everything we do.

In particular, we must strengthen our commitment to ensuring that women and girls are active participants in decision-making, and promote their empowerment through their communities.
 
The Division of International Protection (DIP) has been collecting good practices from UNHCR operations around the world on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, to build momentum within the Organization and inspire others. I strongly encourage operations to continue sharing innovative examples of their work with DIP.
 
The full realization of gender equality is a distant yet possible goal, and one towards which we must remain strongly committed. This is true also for our continued struggle to progress towards attaining gender parity among UNHCR staff. Available data from the Division of Human Resources Management clearly shows that we as an organization need to do much more in this regard.
 
Let me thank you all again for your efforts over the past year to empower women and girls, in often very difficult environments. I hope that in 2013 we can take even further steps to achieve greater equality.
After all, "a promise is a promise".
 

António Guterres