Gender equality, women’s empowerment must go beyond any rhetoric, says foreign minister

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said the call for gender equality and women’s empowerment “must go beyond any rhetoric”.

“We have a great opportunity before us and we must not miss this opportunity for the good of half of the world population,” he said while speaking at an International Women’s Day event in Dhaka on Sunday.

“In fact, the historic adoption of the 2030 Development agenda, with its core mission “leaving no one behind” is a powerful message to women empowerment.

“The 2030 Agenda, and its 17 cross-cutting goals especially Goal 5 Gender Equality, make it clear that development will only be sustainable if its benefits accrue equally to both women and men,” he said.

The foreign minister also conveyed his “most sincere felicitations” to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for achieving the Award for Lifetime Contribution for Women Empowerment from the Institute of South Asian Women (ISAW) for her dynamic leadership role in women empowerment.

Hasina is the first political leader to have received this prestigious recognition from ISAW, he said.

In line with its global commitments, he said, the Bangladesh government has made “relentless strides” in translating its global promises into action.

“Our legacy towards pro-women national policy commenced immediately after the liberation war when the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman established a “Women Rehabilitation Board” for the victims of sexual violence in the war of liberation and granted government jobs to those victims that had some qualification and provided incentives to men to take their responsibility.

“Her daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina paid further respect to the war victims by conferring on them the title of ‘freedom fighters’,” he said, adding that women are placed “at the heart of our development agenda”.

“Our development interventions focus more on practical need of women through girls’ education, self-reliance programme, collateral free credit facilities for women, vocational training and entrepreneurship.”

“In addition, it also introduced gender budgeting, unique in the world,” he said, adding that women are now getting loans at discounted rate.

“They are entitled to 10 percent of the SME fund and 10 percent industrial plots,” he said, adding that in the 2018-19 fiscal, the government has allocated Tk 1 billion for the Women Entrepreneurship Fund.