Statement by H.E. Mr. Kazuo Kodama
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan
to the United Nations
On Item 2: Report on the operational activities
At the 2012 First Regular Session of the Executive Board
of UN Women
24 January 2012

Mr. President,

I would like to first congratulate Your Excellency, Mr. Kim Sook of the Republic of Korea, on your assumption of the Presidency of the Executive Board. I would also like to commend Her Excellency Ms. Joy Ogwu for her dedicated work as the first President of the Board. I believe that Ambassador Sook will build on her excellent contributions and further lead the work of the Board in supporting UN Women’s activities.

We welcome the statement just made by Executive Director Ms. Bachelet and her report on the operational activities of UN Women. It is highly commended that under the strong and vibrant leadership of Ms. Bachelet, UN Women has achieved important results during its first year, including its valuable support for women’s participation in constitutional reform in Arab countries while carrying out the enormous tasks of its organizational set-up.

While last year was a transitional period for UN Women, this year UN Women is expected to exercise its full-fledged activities with the Strategic Plan and the Institutional Budget for 2012-2013. We hope that UN Women will steadily enhance its capacity toward a 55-country presence in accordance with the field-oriented Strategic Plan in order to make tangible change on the ground.

Mr. President,

As this is the first meeting of the Executive Board this year, I would like to renew Japan’s strong support for all 6 priority areas in the Development Results Framework of the Strategic Plan. Japan continues to place especially high importance on women’s economic empowerment and women’s involvement in recovery from conflicts and disasters.

The UN Conference of Sustainable Development (Rio+20) to be held in June is one of the most important events of the year. In order to achieve sustainable development, it is essential that all individuals are able to exercise their full capacities and participate in building a better society. In this regard, we believe that women’s participation is key and expect UN Women to also play an active role in the Rio+20 processes.

Mr. President,

I am pleased to announce that despite the economic and fiscal condition at home, Japan is considering doubling its core contribution to UN Women this year. While core resources remain important in order for UN Women to strengthen its capacity to implement programmes, non-core resources are also becoming more vital to the deliverance of a wide-range of programmes at the field level. Therefore, we welcome UN Women’s efforts to both broaden and deepen the donor base. In this regard, I would like to hear from the Executive Director on her strategies to make a linkage between core resources and non-core resources in UN Women’s programmes.

The bottom-up, comprehensive, multi-sectoral and participatory approaches adopted by UN Women are also important elements of the concept of human security, which Japan has been promoting for over a decade. Indeed, the UN Trust Fund for Human Security, which was established to operationalize the concept, has funded joint programmes of UN agencies, including the former UNIFEM, in 122 countries and regions. I would like to take this opportunity to reach out to the international community, all UN member states, to consider contributing to the Trust Fund for Human Security with a view to supporting the UN system’s activities on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Finally, Mr. President,

On 11 March this year, we will commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake. I am pleased to tell you that steady recovery efforts have been made which maximize the capacity of women in my country. Japan is willing to share with the international community our experience and lessons learned on gender equality and the empowerment of women in natural disaster through events such as the upcoming session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Thank you, Mr. President.