The Permanent Mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the United Nations in Geneva, in cooperation with the missions of Spain, Sweden, Costa Rica and Malaysia, called on the international community to renew its commitment to ensure gender equality, women’s economic empowerment and preserve their full rights.

The initiative sheds light on the importance of enabling women to have access to education, economic resources, opportunities, decent work and equal pay, Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations in Geneva Ahmed Ihab Gamal El-Din issued a statement on Thursday on behalf of the initiative’s founding member.

“Women's economic empowerment can be advanced through the realisation of a wide range of basic human rights, including but not limited to the right to education, work and health, as well as full participation in political, public, economic and social life,” the statement noted.

The new initiative will seek to activate the economic empowerment agenda for women in multilateral forums, including the Human Rights Council, taking into account what the pandemic has revealed about the need to strengthen national and international efforts and policies in this regard, the statement highlighted.

It will further seek to take into account the new barriers that prevail over women's economic empowerment, including work-life balance, new technologies and artificial intelligence, the increasing informality of work, the mobility of female workers and climate change, among others.

Gamal El-Din called on countries to pay sufficient attention to promoting women's economic empowerment during the twenty-seventh session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh.

Egypt will host COP27 in November with the aim to gather policymakers and turn their attention to pressing matters on top of which is climate change.

It is worth noting that Egypt’s National Human Rights Strategy was launched in September 2021, emphasising the need to achieve equal job opportunities in all sectors, with the aim to develop plans to increase women’s participation in the labour force, especially in Upper Egypt.