Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation on the Sixty-Eighth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68): “Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective”

The sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 68) took place from 11 to 22 March 2024 and brought together representatives of member States, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations from across the world to discuss the priority theme.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation was jointly convened by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.

The objective of the regional consultation is to provide an interactive forum for ESCAP member States and key stakeholders in Asia and the Pacific to examine ways to accelerate progress on key frameworks including the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (in particular the 2019 Asia-Pacific Declaration on Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Beijing+25 Review), the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The consultation provided an opportunity for both state and non-state actors to take stock of key trends, needs, gaps in policy responses, and good practices, as well as to consider possible areas for joint interventions (policy, programmatic, or otherwise), to address gendered poverty, utilize the power of gender-sensitive public institutions and close financing gaps for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Specifically, this regional consultation will facilitate the exchange of knowledge and ideas among state and non-state actors in order to:

• Foster a better understanding of the systemic structures keeping women and girls in poverty. These include structural inequalities in the household, labour market, and state institutions, which can be exacerbated by women’s experience of intersectional discrimination. 
• Explore economic and social policies that focus on the realization of the needs and rights of all, for the eradication of gendered poverty.
• Assess current financing gaps for addressing gendered poverty and consider how to create and promote gender-sensitive financing mechanisms, both in the public and private sector.
• Explore policy solutions to address digital, green and care transformations can be made gender-sensitive and address women’s poverty.:
• Develop comprehensive frameworks for strengthened institutions that have the capacity, resources and mandate to advance women’s human rights and actively respond to the needs of women and girls. Explore how public institutions can be at the core of ensuring gender mainstreaming across all domains.
• Enhance the availability of comprehensive and accurate data and research, to inform efforts to advance gender equality and strengthen safeguards and accountability for gendered harms.
• Promote partnerships to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 1 on ending poverty and Goal 5 on achieving gender equality.

The outcome of the Asia-Pacific regional consultation for CSW68 is a set of suggested actions for accelerated progress, in line with the Priority Theme for CSW68. The suggested actions will feed into CSW68 and can inform membership contributions to the Agreed Conclusions.