April 12, 2019, Tashkent - the Women's Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan, with the assistance of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, conducts national consultations on a comprehensive review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) related to actions in the field of gender equality and the empowerment opportunities for all women and girls.

2020 will be a crucial year for accelerating the implementation of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. The world community celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), as well as the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its sustainable development goals.

The main objective of preparing for this anniversary should be a comprehensive review process at the national level, in which all stakeholders will participate.

Today’s consultation involves representatives from various ministries and departments, civil society organizations, agencies of the United Nations system, as well as the media and other interested parties to assess the progress made in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women over the past 5 years, identify omissions and failures, as well as the development of strategies to eliminate these omissions and failures.

The national consultations will form the basis for the preparation of a national report that summarizes the progress made over the past five years, the remaining problems for women and girls, as well as the way forward. National consultations should lead to the formation of new commitments and clear sets of priority actions with timelines, implementers and resources for their implementation.

National reports will also be included in the global report that UN-Women will present at the sixty-fourth session of the Commission on the Status of Women to be held in March 2020.

Such multi-stakeholder consultations and reviews provide an effective platform for renewed dialogue about changes and actions to prevent and eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against all women and girls and help accelerate the implementation of existing commitments on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.