Ceremony for the opening of the UN Women Geneva Liaison Office

Executive Director,
Ambassador Zellweger,
Excellencies,
Dear Colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen:

Today is a great day for International Geneva. The opening of UN Women’s liaison office here at the Palais des Nations is a crucial step forward towards further promoting gender equality across International Geneva. As the operational hub of the UN-system, the work done here touches everyone around the world on a daily basis. By strengthening our gender dimension, we will promote and achieve equal opportunities for women and girls everywhere.

UN Women has always been an important partner for us in Geneva. The inauguration of this liaison office is the logical result of an ever deepening collaboration in recent years. The promotion of gender equality has been an important priority for me and many of my colleagues and Gender Champions here today. This is why we launched and expanded the Geneva Gender Champions network in 2015 and 2016. And UN Women has provided really valuable advice as we developed this initiative together with the Permanent Representative of the USA, Ambassador Hamamoto, and the NGO Women@theTable. And at UNOG, we could also count on extremely useful input from UN Women in the development of a gender policy as part of our own commitments under the Geneva Gender Champions initiative.

The presence of the Executive Director of UN Women here today is another proof of her personal commitment to close cooperation between New York and Geneva. And I am very pleased that the Geneva Gender Champions Initiative will be replicated in New York next week, and hopefully in other duty stations. Together with the new liaison office of UN Women in Geneva, we will pursue our common goal of reaching gender equality by 2030 in a more effective and holistic manner for the biggest possible impact.

Progress towards gender equality has been too slow. And if we continue to do business as usual, it will take until 2095 to close the gender gap for economic participation and opportunity. That is simply not good enough, and many leaders across the world have realized this. The United Nations, as a global moral force, should be a shining example, and to get there, we too have to improve significantly. The UN Women liaison Office will help us achieve our targets on gender equality within our organization and across the wide range of topics from disarmament to human rights, trade, health, humanitarian assistance and many more that are defining the global impact of this city of ours.

The establishment of this new liaison office is also another example of the strong support by the Swiss Government for the work of the United Nations in Geneva. I thank all those who have worked to establish the office, and I warmly welcome our UN Women colleagues to the Palais des Nations. I look forward to close cooperation to make gender equality a reality for all, and I also invite you to the screening of the film, suffragette, in Room XX at 5.30 pm.

Thank you very much.