ILO, UN Women sign Letter of Intent

The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Women Wednesday signed Letter of Intent to develop a common approach for better coordination and cooperation to work effectively on advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment initiatives. This initiative will help both the UN agencies to amplify the voices and capacities of women, wherever their rights are violated, their opportunities are suppressed and their contributions are ignored.

On this occasion, Country Director, UN Women Ms. Alice Shackelford said, “Both ILO and UN Women have been working on the issue of Decent Work for Home-Based Workers’ and have intervened at policy, institutional and community levels and these interventions are proving successful”. She emphasized that UN Women works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls, the empowerment of women, and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners in development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. UN Women’s objective is to enhance national capacity and ownership to enable national partners to formulate gender responsive laws and policies and to scale up successful strategies to deliver on national commitments on gender equality. She said that UN Women is envisaging a close partnership with the ILO on its key thematic areas including women’s voice, leadership and participation, women’s economic empowerment, ending violence against women and girls, women’s leadership in peace, security and humanitarian response and gender equality in planning, budgeting and statistics.