I thank the organizers and I greet in advance all the speakers at this meeting for their participation. It is an absolutely essential meeting.
President Macron has made gender equality the great cause of his five-year term. In this context, education as a vector of gender equality is a strong priority for France in the context of its policy and its external actions.
Education is indeed a prerequisite for the full and complete realization of the rights of girls and women, for their economic and social empowerment, for the respect and improvement of their health and their sexual and reproductive rights, for a rise in power of their leadership, to a more effective fight against global warming, and to a better orientation of girls and women towards the sectors of technologies and innovations.
France is actively advocating for gender equality to be taken into account in the education policies of its partner countries, and in particular in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this context, I would like to salute the remarkable work of UNESCO, and of its Executive Director, Ms. Audrey Azoulay, which enables us to precisely follow the state of progress of this problem in the world.
France is also campaigning for a better consideration of gender in the intervention strategies of bilateral and multilateral donors, and in particular within the framework of the Global Partnership for Education.
France is indeed strongly committed to the Global Partnership for Education, to which it has contributed 200 million euros over the period 2018-2020 and which it will continue to support. The Partnership’s work to progress towards the achievement of the sustainable development goals in the field of education is a model of multilateral success that France wishes to promote.
France has therefore campaigned for greater consideration of gender in the Partnership’s new five-year strategy, as well as the establishment of an envelope dedicated to gender equality in education and girls’ education.
Finally, France wishes to promote gender equality in education as a cross-cutting theme of the Generation Equality Forum in June 2021, which we will host in Paris with UN Women and Mexico.
It will be a strong moment of exchange on the role of education for the promotion of gender equality.
Thank you.
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