UN Women calls for women¹s rights and empowerment to be central in humanitarian action

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Deputy Executive Director Yannick Glemarec will join other world leaders at the first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held today and tomorrow in Istanbul, Turkey.

The first gathering of its kind, the Summit aims to place humanity—people’s safety, dignity and the right to thrive—at the heart of global decision-making and initiate a set of concrete actions and commitments to enable countries and communities to better prepare for and respond to crises. With more than 5,000 expected participants, the programme will include seven high-level leaders' roundtables on priority action areas.

At the Summit, UN Women will advocate for greater investment for gender equality and for women’s rights and women’s empowerment to become standard principles of humanitarian planning and action. UN Women and UNFPA Executive Directors will be UN co-chairs for tomorrow’s Roundtable Four, entitled “High-Level Leaders’ Roundtable on Women and Girls: Catalyzing Action to Achieve Gender Equality”, where Member States, UN and multilateral actors will come together to endorse core commitments to improve humanitarian action for women and girls worldwide.  

Member State co-chairs for Roundtable four will include: President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (Croatia); President Michael D. Higgins (Ireland); Deputy Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa (Samoa) and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström (Sweden). The Roundtable will be attended by more than 25 Member States and civil society representatives.

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