Madam Vice-President, members of the Executive Board, colleagues, and friends. It is my great pleasure to join you for this segment of the annual session of the UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS Executive Board for 2023. 

We are pleased to present the first annual report on the implementation of UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy 2022–2025. 

As we heard yesterday, the current moment demonstrates how crises compound each other. 

• The pandemic receded in some areas, but conflict intensified, and prices rose. 
• For the first time, the Human Development Index tracked a global reversal.
• The Gender Inequality Index has also remained stagnant since 2019.
• From politics to corporate boardrooms, women and girls face disproportionate hurdles to realizing their potential due to deeply entrenched social norms.

Progress is disappointingly slow. For instance, the number of people holding a bias against women has barely been reduced in the last years. 

The UNDP Gender Social Norms Index 2023 — that we will release next week - shows that: 

• Nearly 90 percent of the population still hold some kind of bias against women. 
• Nearly half of people (46%) believe that men should have more right to a job than a woman. This helps to explain why during times of crisis and scarcity, women are the first ones to leave their jobs. 

The hard-won education gains are not translating into more equal economic outcomes. Even in the 57 countries where adult women are more educated than men, the average income gender gap is 39 percent. 

The Administrator mentioned yesterday that the challenges are many — but so are the solutions. 2022, the first year of the Gender Equality Strategy, 2022-2025, has been a year of transition, but UNDP did not wait to help countries begin making the systemic shifts that gender equality requires. 

It is worth mentioning that in 2022, UNDP invested $3.1 billion in gender equality (66% of our total programmatic budget) – the highest level ever. 

But what does it mean in terms of impact? UNDP has played an essential role helping countries to improve the lives of millions of people, especially the lives of many women. Such as in Somalia, where a group of young and brave women journalists proved that when they are given the power to make decisions and run their businesses they can compete at the highest levels. 

Through 2022, UNDP across its six signature solutions responded to challenges in diverse situations. 

• The Ministry of Transport in Colombia established quotas for women to access income opportunities; over 650 women gained jobs in public transport. 
• Guatemala's Nationally Determined Contributions established a target to have at least 30 per cent of the country's forests managed by women. 
• Armenia implemented a 30 per cent quota in its elections, and women won 35.5 per cent of seats in the National Assembly and 30 per cent of those on local councils. 
• Sri Lanka passed a bill mandating gender equality in land inheritance. 

These are just a few examples. But they give a sense of how UNDP has moved from recovery responses to the pandemic, to more structural work across the six signature solutions. Our BPPS director will elaborate further in a moment. 

I want to acknowledge UNDP is committed to continuous learning and building on past accomplishments in the implementation of the Strategy, building on the findings of the evaluations of the energy portfolio and LNOB (leaving no one behind). 

Excellencies, UNDP continued to be bold in protecting the gains of gender equality and pushing for women´s rights, bringing restorative ambition during a year of lost ground.   

Thank you for accompanying us in this process, and for the meaningful contributions in guiding and supporting the implementation of the new Strategy. 

I call on you to join us in moving forward our shared agenda towards gender equality.