Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. Assistant UN Secretary-General and UN Women Deputy Executive Director, Asa Regner, has told journalists that Sierra Leone government needs to invest in women and girls to maintain peace in the country because whenever there is war in the country women and girls suffer the most.
She made the call on Friday ,July 1st , at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Arbedeen in Freetown during a two-day visit to Sierra Leone.
“We know through evidence and data that when you invest in women, when you take action to support women’s rights, to make women’s organizations function and can work through funding giving to them, when you invest in women and girls, that country is more likely to keep and sustain peace. It would give that country more legitimacy and would widen the scope for peace and peaceful societies,” she said.
Speaking to the media during the press conference, Madam Asa Regner said the aim of the visit to Sierra Leone was to strengthen and re-affirm UN Women’s support towards the advancement of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls with a view to furthering advocacy and partnership in line with the development agenda of Sierra Leone and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). She said during their visit they were able to meet President Bio and other key stakeholders working on gender equality and women empowerment, which showed that they were keen to working on gender equality and women’s rights with UN Women.
“From my point of view, I wanted to come all this way because Sierra Leone and Liberia are both obviously deserve support for the intentions and the policies that Sierra Leone wants to put in place or already has put in place.So, we really want to support and work with the government, civil society, women’s organizations, young people’s organizations, rural women’s representatives, and the private sector to make sure that women are safe,” she said.
She said they have been hearing from the government about their initiatives, citing the Gender Equality Bill and the quotas for political participation which would be important before the elections. She therefore said the initiatives are good such as sexuality education, different initiatives to prevent, protect and support justice in relation to violence against women and girls.
Madam Asa Regner said they also understand that work was in progress to strengthen children’s rights, but they came to Sierra Leone because the country just like Liberia is a peaceful country.
She said during their visit, they also know that Sierra Leone is a candidate for the Security Council, which is an excellent opportunity for the country to show both initiatives when it comes to gender equality.
“Governments needs to work with their own national budgets and to allocate their budget spending in relation to priorities that will be favourable for half of the population. In that case, we mean, it seems women are often those with less economic opportunities, less power and less income, so that is also a discussion we have had with the government on how to work with gender responsive budgeting and what the United Nations can do in order to support women in Sierra Leone,” she said.
In her own speech, UN Women Reginal Director for West and Central Africa, Oulimata Sarr, thanked the people of Sierra Leone for their warm welcome and the media for the coverage. She said for her, the media play a critical role in the work they were doing.
“We need all the media outlets to amplify our messages. We need you all to help us change the narrative. But we also need you to un-stereotype the narrative. In order to do that, we have to work with you as allies. We have to make sure that our office in Sierra Leone shares with you the knowledge, the data, all the advocacy papers that you might need to be able to really play that critical role on gender equality and women empowerment,” she said.
She said UN Women talks about gender equality and human empowerment because communities, societies, and countries that are the most prosperous, most beautiful are the countries where women and girls, men and boys have equal opportunity.
She added that gender equality is a piece about partnership with everyone that can work with the government, civil society organization, donor partners, philanthropy and private sector to accelerate it because they don’t want to wait for another 100 years to reach gender equality and empowerment.
“Gender equality doesn’t only mean that we have to be the same as men. We are different, we are women, so we don’t want to multiply the world because it led by men. We are seeing the war in Ukraine, women and children were the first to being evacuated because women are not fighting like everybody, so UN Women is committed to strengthening its existing partnerships to improve the quality of women for them to have access to comprehensive essential services for survivors of violence in Sierra Leone,” she said.
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