Country Director Elena Tischenko's speech at high level dialogue on gender equality

First of all, I would like to congratulate the Ministry of Women’s Affairs with organizing this High Level Dialogue on Gender Equality and am particularly grateful for the leadership of H.E. Dr. Ing Kantha Pahvi, Minister of Women’s Affairs, for her continued role as a champion of gender equality and for support in making this   dialogue happen.

2011 is a critical year for focusing on these issues. With less than five years to go until the target date of 2015 for achieving the MDGs, we are all searching for breakthrough strategies for MDG acceleration. More importantly, investing in women and girls in and of itself constitutes a breakthrough strategy. The multiplier effects of those investments will increase the prospects of achieving all the MDGs.

Today’s High Level Dialogue represents the collaborative effort and commitment of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and sector ministries of the Royal Government of Cambodia, Development Partners and CSO to identify together future smart investments in gender equality that could help  accelerate the achievement of Cambodian Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Today’s event is intended to create, or rather further facilitate, the dialogue among the key players in the Royal Government of Cambodia, Development Partners, and CSOs about the status of women within CMDGs framework, to review bottlenecks and challenges and to agree on key priorities and partnership strategies to promote gender equality and women empowerment.

While there is a number of areas under the CMDG framework that call for priority attention in order to close the gender gaps, the High Level Dialogue today puts special focus on women’s economic empowerment, which is one of the key pillars of the Neary Rattanak III and a top priority of the Royal Government of Cambodia in the time of global economic difficulties.

Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

As we look forward, it is useful first to recognize that significant progress has already been made by the Royal Government of Cambodia to eliminate gender-based discrimination in the past decade. Policies, legal framework, and mechanisms were put in place. The three important ongoing national reform programmes - on decentralization, public financial management, and on public administration - have been taking into consideration gender concerns in their respective areas. These efforts are reflective of the Government’s leadership, commitment and support to promote gender equality in Cambodia. Unique opportunities now emerge for the implementation of national policies and programmes and of course, for all of us to coordinate and work together better. Allow me to take this opportunity to acknowledge and congratulate the Ministry of Women’s Affairs as the leading ministry in this impressive effort and achievements it is producing.

Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

While we see good signs of progress in promoting gender equality and empowering Cambodian women and girls, there are challenges that remain to be overcome. As evidence shows, boys and men are faring better than women and girls in several important respects:
•    While we see the improvement in primary education indicators and in eliminating gender disparities in primary and lower secondary education, still fewer girls than boys continue to upper secondary education and to universities. And almost one third of girls have never attended school, in contrast with 15 percent of men and boys .
•    As many as 33 percent of women over 15 years of age are illiterate, which constraints their ability to access high- pay employment and leave them more vulnerable to exploitation or to being duped in everyday transactions .
•    Women represent a large part of the Cambodian workforce with 80.4 percent of Cambodian women aged 15 and over participating in the economy . However, women are mostly engaged in the informal sector, making up 82 percent of this group.
•    Last but not least, women’s limited access to productive resources such as land curbs their livelihood options and remains a serious constraint for them to overcome poverty.

To address these issues and, more importantly, to foster Cambodian sustainable and inclusive development, we must recognize important roles of women as much as those of men, in socio-economic development and poverty reduction. This could be done through scaling up investments in women and girls as the experience from countries in Asia-Pacific and other regions show.  Effective and timely investments will help a country not only to achieve its MDG gender targets, but also to make better progress towards achieving other goals .

On this note, I hope that today’s dialogue among senior officials of the ministries of the Royal Government of Cambodia, national and international partners will be instrumental in identifying key priorities for  improving economic status of Cambodian women’s and their contribution to country’s development  in the medium and longer run.

Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Following the Opening Speech by Her Excellency Minister Dr. Ing Kantha Phavi, Ministry of Women’s Affairs in a few moments, we will hear from Excellency Chamreoun Kim, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, and Excellencies guest speakers from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training, representatives from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and other key Development Partner agencies. Their presentations, and facilitation support by Mrs. Annemarie Reerink from UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Center, will set the stage for our discussion.

I hope that we will exchange views and explore policy options so that by the end of today’s event we could reinforce our commitment and reach consensus on future investments into gender equality and economic empowerment of women to accelerate the achievement of the MDGs. Such an acceleration framework could guide our collaborative effort in establishing a more enabling environment, a well-coordinated working mechanism and knowledge-sharing channels to monitor and improve progress as we go forward.

I look forward to having fruitful discussions today and strong follow up in the future, and wish all the participants the best of success.

Orkun charan

Thank you.