Today marked the end of the Sixty-Seventh Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Chile using a hybrid format.

The Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which carried out its sixty-seventh meeting on December 1-2, confirmed once again the continued relevance of the agreements that have made up the Regional Gender Agenda since 1977, particularly the Tlatelolco Commitment: A Decade of Action to Achieve Substantive Gender Equality and the Care Society, adopted in August 2025, reaffirming the “commitment to accelerate its full and effective implementation” in synergy with other regional and international treaties and mechanisms.

The Sixty-Seventh Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean was held using a hybrid format and was organized by ECLAC, in its capacity as Secretariat of the Conference, in coordination with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and with the Government of Mexico serving as Chair.

“The region is moving along the right path, but it faces challenges that require resolve and greater speed in terms of action. This gathering has allowed us to reaffirm the importance of translating our consensuses into concrete progress: strengthening social dialogue, consolidating public policies, bolstering governance and the institutional framework, fostering cultural shifts, promoting effective international cooperation, ensuring sufficient and sustainable financing, and continuing to break the statistical silence,” Ana Güezmes, Director of ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs, summarized at the meeting’s closing session.

“Let’s move forward with the Tlatelolco Commitment as our navigation route, with substantive gender equality and the care society as a near horizon, and with multilateralism as a tool for our shared goals,” emphasized Güezmes, speaking on behalf of ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs.

In the meeting’s agreements, the delegates thanked the Government of Mexico for presenting a proposed road map for implementing the Tlatelolco Commitment over the next three years and welcomed the reports prepared by countries on their planned actions, encouraging them to redouble efforts. It was also decided that the Presiding Officers’ deliberations will be taken to the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), to be held on March 9-20, 2026 in New York with the theme of “Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and addressing structural barriers.”

“I want to reaffirm the importance of ensuring that the agreements we have adopted at this Presiding Officers have resonance in the negotiations that will take place in the framework of the CSW70, since access to justice is the right that guarantees the exercise of all other rights. The goal is that access to justice become a reality for all women and girls, especially for those who face multiple and interrelated forms of discrimination, inequality and violence. States have the obligation to remove the structural barriers that historically have limited its exercise,” Bibiana Aido Almagro, UN Women’s Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, stated during the meeting’s closing session.

Meanwhile, Citlalli Hernández Mora, the Minister for Women of Mexico, recognized that the challenges associated with the Decade of Action to Achieve Substantive Gender Equality and the Care Society established in the Tlatelolco Commitment “are not insignificant.” She continued: “In fact, we need political will, budgets and to take on ever more commitments in our nations that enable us to transform at the roots, and on all fronts, a society that has been built unequally, with great violence. We in Mexico are convinced, and I know that in general this idea is embraced in the region, that to continue making progress on building public policies, laws, regulations and infrastructure with a gender perspective, a vision of substantive equality and a vision of care, a cultural shift must also come – a social shift that embraces equality.”

In the agreements, the countries thanked the experts from the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Rhoda Reddock and Patsilí Toledo, for sharing information on the draft general recommendation No. 41 regarding gender stereotypes. They also welcomed paragraph 45 of the joint declaration of the fourth Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the European Union – held on November 9, 2025 – in which States acknowledge the importance of enhancing biregional cooperation to reduce inequalities and improve social cohesion, including by designing and implementing public policies aimed at strengthening care systems.

The delegates once again encouraged the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean and of other regions, developed countries, the agencies, funds and programs of the United Nations and other relevant stakeholders to contribute financial resources to ensure the sustainability of the Regional Fund in Support of Women’s and Feminist Organizations and Movements, the objective of which is to support the strengthening of women’s and feminist organizations and networks, along with their role in promoting gender equality and ensuring women’s human rights in the Latin America and Caribbean region.

The Presiding Officers, elected at the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico City, August 12-15, 2025), is made up of Mexico as Chair and Antigua and Barbuda, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti and Uruguay as Vice-Chairs.