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    of the General Assembly are from South

Statement by

Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin, Permanent Representative

Special Event

Women and the Origins of the UN:

A Southern Legacy

The Global South as the Gender Trailblazer at the UN system

22 May 2018

 

 

Excellencies,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

  •      We thank the Permanent Mission of Brazil and other organizers for highlighting this aspect of Southern legacy that is relatively little known here at the United Nations.
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  •     We appreciate all the other speakers and panelists who are taking part in this enriching discussion.
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  •    This is a useful opportunity to remember and acknowledge the historic contribution of women, especially from the South, in creating this remarkable multilateral forum of the United Nations.
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  •     When we look back at the time of the origins of the United Nations, we must remind ourselves that this was the time when many of the so-called nations of the South of today were still either colonies, and not even independent nations or merely nascent states.
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  •      Even in the West, the level of legal equality and the social opportunities available to women were vastly different from what obtains today.
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  •      In the course of today’s discussions, we are learning about the several remarkable women from the developing countries who left a mark on various foundational processes of the UN.
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  •      All these were visionary and inspirational leaders, several of them overcoming exceptional odds, in their respective national contexts also.
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  •      For instance, the women from India who made significant contribution to the UN’s work in the initial years, were leaders who had been active participants in India’s independence movement in the preceding years. They were also engaged actively in the nation-building process at the same time.
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  •      These women served as bridges between the processes of global norm-building at the UN and the institution building processes at the national level.
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  •      One such figure was Ms. Hansa Jivraj Mehta, a reformer and educator, as also a prolific writer. She served as the Indian delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights and is widely known for ensuring a more gender sensitive language in the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UDHR.  It is said, but for Ms. Mehta’s insistence, it could very well have been that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights may have been only the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man.
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  •      Hansa Mehta was also a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the Constitution of independent India around the same time. The Indian Constitution draws upon several aspects from both the UN Charter and the UDHR. The Indian Constitution guaranteed the equality of status for women, abolished discrimination of various kinds and provides for fundamental rights and duties. The themes of equality, freedom, justice, peace and respect for international law resonated throughout the Indian constitution that was worked upon around the time that the theme of Human Rights was resonating universally.
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  •      Another important figure was Ms. Lakshmi Menon, the Indian delegate to the UN General Assembly and the Head of the Commission on Status of Women as early as 1949-50. She was an outspoken advocate of the ‘universality’ of human rights. Ms. Menon, along with her colleagues from other developing countries, strongly opposed the concept of ‘colonial relativism’, which sought to deny human rights to people in countries under colonial rule. Menon famously called it an attempt to ‘justify what cannot be justified’.
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  •      One of their contemporaries was Begum Shareefah Hamid Ali, who started her political career as a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, and became the President of the All India Women’s Conference in 1935. She joined as a member of the UN Commission on Status of Women in 1947, the year India became independent.
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  •       Each of them successfully challenged the dominant narrative of the time with their vocal criticism of cultural imperialism and stereotyping of Indian women. Each in their own way helped shape the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and also consolidating equal rights for women as a human right.  
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  •      In succeeding years, the issues of poverty alleviation, women empowerment, equitable growth, right to development etc., also came to define the contribution of G-77 and the Non-Aligned Movement to the global discourse.
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  •      In 1972, at the first UN Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm, India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi helped shape the environment discourse, at an early stage, linking the aspects of poverty alleviation and environmental protection.
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  •      In the SDG era of today, women’s empowerment has progressed from viewing women as recipients of welfare benefits to partners and active agents of change for sustainable development and peacebuilding. We are moving from a women-centric to women-led development paradigm.   
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  •      A little noticed fact has been that while the global North tries to position itself as a leader of gender equality, there have been only three women who have served as the President of the General Assembly.  All three have been from the global South.
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  •      The first one to be elected was an Indian – Ms. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, as early as 1953. The other two have been Ms. Angie Elizabeth Brooks from Liberia in 1969 and Ms. Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa from Bahrain in 2006.  The next President of the General Assembly will also hopefully be a woman candidate, again from the global South. 
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  •      There has been no woman from the global North, who has been recommended by any state to assume the responsibility of serving as the President of the General Assembly, in more than seven decades of the UN. As Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit said in her inaugural speech, as the first woman President of the General Assembly, on 15 September 1953, “It is, of course, relatively easy to state objectives, but infinitely more difficult to attain them.” 
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  •      Today, even as we welcome and celebrate the Secretary General’s efforts to achieve gender parity in the appointments to the senior positions in the UN system, it is also important to know how many of the women in senior positions come from developing countries of the South and to bring that perspective to the fore.
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  •      Even though we have focussed on the women who played a role at the start at the UN, I would like to conclude by paying tribute to the many women diplomats, leaders and members of civil society from across developing countries, who continue to contribute immensely to shape the all-round discourse at the UN, be it related to human rights or development or peace and security, through their unique perspectives and wisdom. They are the many stars whose twinkling roles has brought light to our every day lives . 
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    A big collective Thank you to all of them.