4-5 Dec 2024 Santiago, Chile | Presiding officers
The Sixty-sixth meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean will take place from 4th to 5th December 2024, in ECLAC Headquarters in...
The countries of the region participating in the Sixty-sixth Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean reaffirmed “once again the commitment to take all necessary and progressive measures so that States, as duty bearers, accelerate the effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Regional Gender Agenda.”
This intergovernmental gathering – organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (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) – took place on Wednesday and Thursday, December 4-5 in Chile, with the participation of ministers and senior authorities from the region’s national mechanisms for women’s advancement, specialists, and representatives of civil society.
The delegates attending the meeting in Santiago agreed to strengthen gender equality institutions and architecture through the prioritization at the highest level of machineries for the advancement of women, reinforcing the role of these mechanisms as the governing bodies of policies on gender equality and women’s rights and autonomy, and ensuring that gender equality is mainstreamed throughout the State structure, and by increasing the allocation of financial, technical and human resources, gender budgeting, and monitoring and accountability, with civic participation.
The XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean will be held in Mexico on August 12-15, 2025. At the meeting of the Presiding Officers, the countries approved the road map, which includes a series of regional and subregional activities with governments, academics, parliamentarians and civil society organizations, among other stakeholders.
The theme of the Conference in Mexico will be “Transformations in the Political, Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Spheres to Promote the Care Society and Gender Equality.”
“Today is a decisive time for us, with the historic opportunity to reimagine our societies. The XVI Regional Conference on Women, which will be held in Mexico next year, will be a key space for consolidating regional commitments to gender equality, the forging of a care society, and sustainability,” said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, who called for moving ahead with strategic investments and public policies to face the current care crisis, in order to ensure a just future for present and future generations.
Meanwhile, Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and UN Women Deputy Executive Director for Normative Support, UN System Coordination and Programme Results, stated that: “Latin America and the Caribbean is reshaping the global conversation and setting new standards for gender equality. The Declaration by the Ministers and High Authorities of the National Machineries for the Advancement of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean strengthens the care society paradigm. Let us continue to place women and girls in all their diversity at the front and center of our efforts, ensuring that every girl has the opportunity to live her life free of barriers and full of promise. I cannot conclude without saying: viva América Latina y el Caribe. Vivan las mujeres y #VivasNosQueremos.”
“The culture of equality is here to stay. In institutions, in our lives, in our countries, in our communities. It’s time to defend what has been achieved and allow no rollbacks. This is the time for women because every action we take for a girl, a young woman or adult woman will have an impact on our society’s cultural shift,” said Ingrid Gómez Saracíbar, Undersecretary-designate for issues of violence against women at the Ministry for Women of Mexico, speaking on behalf of Minister-designate Citlalli Hernández Mora, in the country’s capacity as Vice Chair of the Presiding Officers and host of the next Conference. “For Mexico, the XVI Regional Conference on Women, which will take place on August 12th to 15th, 2025, will be the opportunity to get citizens involved in the historic agreements of the Beijing Platform and other international agreements and treaties on gender equality and women’s rights that have allowed us as countries to make progress on the path to guaranteeing and expanding rights.”
At the meeting in Santiago, the representatives welcomed the working document Action for equality, development and peace in Latin America and the Caribbean: Draft regional report on the review of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 30 years on, in synergy with the implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda, presented by ECLAC. The final version of this document, which will include countries’ comments, will be taken to the 69th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69), due to be held in 2025 in New York.
The delegates also agreed to support the strengthening of the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, through the update of official gender statistics and indicators and of a repository for regulatory frameworks, and the development of studies that will contribute to monitoring the commitments of the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to building institutional capacity with a gender perspective in the region’s countries.
In a similar vein, participants approved the Declaration by the Ministers and High-Level Authorities of the National Machineries for the Advancement of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean for the Sixty-ninth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the focus of which will be on the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the Twenty-third Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
In the Declaration, the representatives recognized the gains and lessons learned in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the national level, in synergy with the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, despite the structural and emerging challenges facing the region.
They also made the commitment to, among other things, “accelerate, as a matter of urgency, efforts to overcome the four structural challenges of gender inequality, namely socioeconomic inequality and the persistence of poverty, discriminatory, violent and patriarchal cultural patterns and the predominance of a culture of privilege, the sexual division of labor and the unfair social organization of care, and the concentration of power and hierarchical relations in the public sphere.”
The current Presiding Officers – elected during the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Buenos Aires, 2022) – is led by Argentina, as Chair, and Barbados, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay and Venezuela, as Vice Chairs.
The meeting was attended by 27 government delegations (17 from Latin America and 6 from the Caribbean, plus Spain, the United States, Canada and Norway), representatives of 10 United Nations System organizations and other intergovernmental and cooperation agencies, and more than 200 representatives of civil society. In total, around 350 people participated.
