(As delivered)

 

Statement by H.E. Mr. Hiroshi Minami

Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations

2016 Annual Session of the UN-Women Executive Board

27 June 2016

 

Mr. President,

 

          At the outset, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Your Excellency, Ambassador Mohamed Khaled Khiari of Tunisia, for your leadership. I also appreciate the informative statement of the Executive Director, Ms. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

 

 

1. Strategic Plan 2014-2017

 

Mr. President,

 

          I welcome the progress made in the implementation of the Strategic Plan 2014-2017, including its Midterm Review. Over 70% of its targets have been met or are on track to be met, which shows that the first two years of the Plan’s implementation have been very successful.

 

          I hope UN-Women will continue to pursue its efforts to strengthen its normative, operational and coordination roles through multi-stakeholder partnerships. In particular, I welcome the launch of the Flagship Programming Initiatives, and hope that this innovative mechanism will contribute to ensuring a gender-responsive implementation of the SDGs.

 

          That being said, even as I acknowledge UN-Women’s critical role in UN coordination, UN-Women needs to accelerate its efforts so that UN entities can meet the requirements set forth in the UN System-wide Action Plan by 2017.

 

2. Resource Mobilization

 

Mr. President,

 

          Ensuring adequate financing is critical to the successful implementation of the rest of the Strategic Plan as well as the SDGs. I am therefore pleased to confirm that the sum of our annual contribution to UN-Women for 2016 amounts to 30 million USD. This represents an increase compared to last year of both core and non-core contributions.

 

          As one of its top supporters, Japan strongly requests UN-Women to make further efforts to improve its funding model, staffing structure, monitoring and reporting mechanism in order to ensure efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability in absorbing voluntary contributions. We expect to discuss further on the funding in September.

 

          In this regard, I expect that the new tools which have been devised to improve project management on the ground, including the Results Management System (RMS) and Donor Agreements Management System (DAMS), will lead to tangible results in these areas.

 

3. Outcomes of the two Summits

      

          Lastly, Japan hosted the G7 Summit in May. Japan took the lead among the G7 countries to create the new “Guiding Principles for Building the Capacity of Women and Girls”, and launched the “Women’s initiative in Developing STEM Career (WINDS)”.

I believe cooperation with UN-Women is critical for turning these initiatives into concrete outcomes.

 

          To close my remarks, I would like to reaffirm that Japan will continue to make extensive efforts to enhance cooperation with UN-Women so that “no woman or girls will be left behind”.

 

          Thank you, Mr. President.