Uruguay will host the XIII Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will bring together representatives from Governments of the region, civil society and United Nations organizations on October 25-28 in Montevideo, according to an agreement signed by the Uruguayan Government and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
The agreement was signed by the Acting Foreign Minister of Uruguay, José Luis Cancela, and ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, Alicia Bárcena. The ceremony, which took place on Tuesday, April 5 in the Uruguayan capital, was also attended by Uruguay’s Minister of Social Development, Marina Arismendi; the Director of the National Institute of Women, Mariella Mazzotti; the Chief of the regional organization’s Division for Gender Affairs, María Nieves Rico, and Magdalena Furtado, UN Women Representative in Uruguay.
“We hope that this Conference will contribute the Latin American and Caribbean perspective to the global process of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Because sustainable development without gender equality is neither development nor is it sustainable,” said Alicia Bárcena, who recalled that the meeting in Montevideo will mark 40 years of building a regional gender equality agenda, after the first event was held in Havana in 1977.
The Regional Conference is an intergovernmental subsidiary body of ECLAC. Its work is guided by Presiding Officers who, during their Fifty-third meeting held in Santiago, Chile, approved that three sub-regional preparatory meetings -for the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, and South America- be held between May and June 2016.
During her two-day stay in Montevideo, Alicia Bárcena participated on April 5 in the inauguration of the third round of negotiations to achieve a regional agreement on the application of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development on access to information, public participation and justice in environmental matters.
She also attended the presentation of the book Demographic Change and Economic and Social Challenges in Uruguay in the XXI Century, which analyzes the consequences that the decline in fertility and the aging of this country's population may have on social protection, health and educational services, the labor market and the macroeconomic dynamics.
The launch of the publication, edited in the framework of a joint project between ECLAC and the World Bank, was attended by Uruguay’s Ministers of Economy and Finance, Danilo Astori; of Social Development, Marina Arismendi; and of Labor and Social Security, Ernesto Murro; along with the Head of the Office of Planning and Budget, Álvaro García, and representatives from both international organizations.
In addition, in the framework of this visit to Montevideo, two agreements for technical cooperation were signed. The first one, signed by ECLAC and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, represented by Alicia Bárcena and Minister Danilo Astori, renewed a long-standing line of cooperation between both institutions, which includes the preparation of diverse studies on the Uruguayan economy.
The second agreement, between ECLAC and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, represented by Alicia Bárcena and Minister Ernesto Murro, will enable new joint cooperation activities in training and the strengthening of labor statistics.
On Wednesday, April 6, Bárcena participated in a seminar at the headquarters of the Training Center of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) with academics to debate a document with proposals for the region’s development that the United Nations organization will present at its next session, ECLAC’s most important biannual event, which will be held in May in Mexico City.
After that meeting, Alicia Bárcena met with representatives of the agencies, programs and funds of the United Nations system in Uruguay, coordinated by Denisse Cook.
