Local Action, Global Impact: Achieving SDGs through Safe Cities for Women and Girls (HLPF 2026 Side Event)

Good afternoon, Excel six distinguished guests, but above all, I would say, friends, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this event on local action, Global Impact achieving SDE through Safe cities for women and girls.
This is organized by UN Women and co sponsored by the government of Spain, the European Union, and the government of Canada.
My name is Claudia Fuentes Julio.
I am the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and I'm going to be your moderator this afternoon.
Let me start by saying that we have interpretation for English, French and Spanish.
If I known in advance, I would have spoken in Spanish instead.
But My notes are written in English, but I will say a couple of words at a certain point in Spanish, since it's important to be multilingual in these settings.
Today, we come together to reflect on a shared priority, how safe cities and safe public spaces for women and girls are not only essential to gender equality, but foundational for achieving 2030 agenda.
Women's and girls safety in public spaces is not a standalone issue.
It is linked to a broad range of human rights, equality and non discrimination, participation, access to services, adequate housing, mobility, decent work, health, education, and security of the person, reflecting the invisibility of human rights and indeed the interconnected nation of SDGs.
Women and girls experience safety in public spaces differently because the risk they face are unique.
This is why meaningful participation of women and women's civil society organizations in the design of safety policies is essential.
Their perspective help identify risk factors and preventive measures that can make cities safer for women and girls.
Localization is also critical.
The SDEs are global commitment, but their meaning becomes concrete at the local level in the streets, market, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
OHHR's guidance framework to create a human rights city is a valuable resource for governments seeking to embed human rights into all aspects of urban governance.
It can help local governments to allocate resources, delivering services, and set priorities that work for everyone without discrimination.
Hand in hand with this UN women's Safe cities and Safe public spaces Global Initiative offers a very powerful example of how coordinated action can produce results.
Since its launch in 2011, the initiative has grown from five founding city programs into the Global South to 75 cities in 36 countries across the world.
Today, we will look at what has been learned from these and other initiatives.
How national and local governments, grassroot women's organizations, civil society, youth, the private sectors and UN partners can work together, how gender responsive data, policies and institutions can drive change, and how local actions can accelerate progress multiple STEs.
With this, I would now like to give a very warm welcome to art Sagi Gumbo banda, who is the Deputy Executive Director for Normative Support, UN System Coordination and Program Result, UN Women, to delivering her opening remarks.
The floor is yours.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, ASG, our Office of the High Commission for Human Rights.
Muchas Gracias.
Claudiaglio, you wanted us to speak in Span A Excellencies, distinguished colleagues and partners.
It's a special afternoon as we wrap up the high level political forum, and we do so going back to our cities, to our communities.
And for me to join the distinguished panel here, I want to appreciate all the co sponsors and to really sit next to a mayor of the city is special because we are also directly engaging in so many ways.
We gather today not only for this important side event, During the high level political forum to take stock of the progress as has been said, but also to gather the momentum for the present and for the future.
Yesterday, our members, and I want to say thank you to our member states, you adopted the 2026 high level Political Forum Ministerial Declaration.
Reaffirming the unwavering commitment to implement and achieve the 2030 agenda and the SDGs while upholding its principles, those principles of human rights, of gender equality of inclusion in all spaces and in all contexts in rural and urban and in crisis countries and in stable environments.
The SDGs cannot be achieved if women and girls are left behind.
Gender equality is catalytic to progress across all girls in March this year, Including in this room were deep negotiations.
In March was the adoption of the Commission on the status of Women agreed conclusions on access to justice for all women and girls, which call for preventing violence, including sexual harassment in public places, online and other settings, while strengthening survivors support and accountability for perpetrators.
This year, we are commemorating the 15 years of our Safer Cities and Safe public spaces program.
For women and girls.
This is a global program, as has been said, 15 years is the year where there is much more assertiveness.
15 years is also the year you can throw tantrums because in adolescent at 15 can actually share.
This panel is also about sharing the deep lesson and the insights out of the 15 years.
Of work.
We acknowledge and really welcome the deep appreciation that has been there across this week.
I really want to take this opportunity to thank the governments of Spain, of Canada, and the European Union for really this session and at this hour in the support from partners, including the Republic of Korea, GIZ, Unia and others, for investing in the safer cities and safe public spaces program.
Indeed our partners.
I was there in Beijing, I was there in Wiro.
To see the iro Commission really standing tall 30 years down the line, it is very meaningful for all of us.
Red Mule habitat and agora are among the women's organizations that we work with.
Multi stakeholder partnership is critical.
We cannot sustain this work without really the multi stakeholder partnership.
This is how it's evolved from five cities to 75 cities in 36 country because we are working together and we know what it means that this is about Gender responsive urban planning.
This is about gender responsive budgeting in our cities, about advancing integrated approaches linking ending violence with political participation and economic empowerment to drive local progress on gender equality.
Over the past 15 years, so many things have changed.
But what has not changed is that women continue to seek their dignity, their rights, and their empowerment in these cities, irrespective of the demographics or the context that we see, but also what has changed is the area of technology, digital and how AI is shaping the work that we do, the way that cities behave, and the way that cities are managed.
Throughout these changes, violence against women has remained persistent, sadly, whether it's in transportation, people being touched, when they actually just want to go home tired after a long day and somebody groups on you, Public spaces, the markets that we've been to where women simply want to sell their vegetables to bring food on the table in the face insecurity and harassment, in the times without enough light, and without toilets, without places to wash their hands.
These are the issues that women confront and *** young women, we are clear that it's about access to economic, social, cultural and political opportunities.
Let me highlight just a few examples.
25 countries, many of them are also in the room from India, Morocco, Mexico, and others have strengthened laws and policies.
Investment in gender responsive urban planning and infrastructure including transport and other actions have really been scaled up in places and spaces in cities like Dhaka, Kigali, and Rambat and integrating violence into male dominated sectors including transport.
We see this in the related programs in Assam, in Kircho and responding to also the production spaces for products of spices like Rajasistan.
This is really assisted in transforming institutions.
I was on the market of Dhaka in Abuja, And in my own country in Zimbabwe.
The women said the market and safe city in the market is where the politics is discussed, of the country.
This is where early warning of crisis happens, but also this is where the economy generates for household.
The joy and the beauty of the city is that it is the ecosystem of our world.
I really want to appreciate the work in all the cities that we've done together, and we know that women and girls count.
I want to conclude with three recommendations.
Establish multi stakeholder governance and evidence based action by coordinating local government, women's rights organizations, transport authorities, residents association, police, community groups in private sector and others using the much needed sex and age disaggregated data to guide policy, track progress, and strengthen prevention.
Second, strengthen laws and policies and accountability mechanisms to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and violence in public spaces, improve survivor centered services and justice, and ensure accountability across local, international institutions.
And lastly, really institutionalize gender responsive urban planning and investment by integrating women's safety and women's leadership into the housing market, sanitation, public infrastructure, guided by women and girls experiences and needs.
And indeed, we must focus on the issues around young women and girls because we know what it means to be young and dating in a city which is dark and dirty, young women need safe spaces to simply be and to experience the fullness of humanity.
The United Nations Charter starts with the words we the people.
It doesn't say where the people are.
It doesn't say which are the people.
It says we are all endowed with inherent dignity and rights, including women in the cities.
This is what we are here for.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for your always very powerful remarks and congratulations again for this 15 years that we will celebrate with a very strong tantrum.
Let me continue now and invite Sony Hernande Portal.
She is the Deputy Director General for Urban Policies, Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda, Government of Spain to deliver human.
Thank you so much.
Jose.
I am going to take the opportunity to speak Spanish.
So Secretary-General, colleagues and friends, thank you so much to the governments of Spain and Canada and the European Union for sponsoring this.
Trinan platform, ing oninitiv local axiom, global impact, only happen if we are able to locate the SDGs in the cities, in the towns, and the public spaces where the SDGs become international commitments for opportunity that will be bettering for the citizens.
In this cities is where inequality become invisible, but also we can see this transformation happen, where we can see that we can adapt political policies that we can generate autonomy, independence, and to be able to construct and develop cities that are more equal.
Due to this, we celebrate that this dialogue can continue for the new international agenda, Spain, believes that this is an opportunity to be able to strengthen the recognition that gender equality in the women can have a key role within these organizations with the exterior politics of Spain and also with the cooperation that puts the axis of the collaboration a strategy that understands feminism, not as a sexual politics, but also to be able to develop this sustainable development and to be able to transform the structure of this power that perpetrates inequality.
We can affirm that the global initiative for safe cities inspires for the strategies that we have in these feminist organizations way before it was approved, the initiative showed that to be able to combat the inequality, it needs to happen from local first to promote public policy based on rights and to be able to work from an intersectional and to be able to have collaboration within different sectors.
Through this, this initiative is one of the best examples of how the four pillars of our feminist cooperation has concrete results.
In the first place, it's an initiative of rights because it guarantees that women and girls can be able to have and exercise the rights in their cities and be able to live without violence.
It's also an initiative of representation because it incorporates women as the protagonists in the top role of the governance of the cities to be able to strengthen the leadership and the capacity of making decisions.
And in third place, it's an initiative or resources because it shows that transforming the inequality, it requires financing, investing, sustainable, to be able and it's also an initiative of cooperation and collaboration because only through international and feminist organizations, academy, private sector, and the UN, this is the only way that we can generate the structural changes that will last.
This is exactly why this is a logic that has been able to push the international collaboration through UN women pushing the initiative since the beginning of its development.
We have seen how it evolved from the pilot actions to be able to become an international reference to be able to localize and locate at five and 11 and for the prevention of violence of a focus that is key.
We are proud to be able to contribute to strengthen this framework and to be able to push and to be able to better the public transportation and to be able to better the national and local governments so that these SDGs can be sustainable throughout time.
It shows that investing go way above preventing violence is to be able to push cities that are more sustainable and to be able to better multiple SDGs.
This addition has a clear reflect of the agenda in Spain, our urban Policy transforms the perspective of the gender to be able to promote more inclusive organizations.
Part of recognizing that the urban is neutral, and these spaces and the mobility and the services influences in different ways in the autonomy, the use of time and the perception of safety of women and men and due to this, our urban agenda pushes accessible spaces To be able to use public transportation and services, paying attention to the necessities of care, to be able to have It shows also to be able to prevent violence and to be able to design cities that are more habitable and that are more secure for all citizens.
Spain wants to continue in this path with the collaboration of women because secure cities is not only an urban issue, is the democracy and justice, social justice and it's a commitment with the rights and the social rights marked for multiple crisis and the questioning of rights that had consolidated and we need to remember that we need more cooperation, not less.
We need More multilateralism, more than what shows the equality between women and men.
Due to this, I would like to take advantage of the intervention to be able to show the commitment of Spain with this collaboration.
I would like to announce that recently a new contribution has been approved for 5 million to be able to secure spaces for women and girls in 2,002,100 euros is the budget for 2026, and this is happening already and we hope that this is inspiration for other actors.
To conclude, I would like to express my desire so that this 15th anniversary is not just a celebration for the path that we have followed, that it is also the star for us to be able to continue on this collective issue because when a woman can participate freely in society, she wins, her community wins, and we are able to advance all of us to be able to have sustainable development.
That is the impact globally and that is the commitment that Spain renews today with this conviction.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much to the government of Spain for such a commitment to gender equality and to human rights and for the implementation of these feminist policies.
Thank you so much.
Sessions, please join me in thanking our first speakers.
We will now show a short video that will bring us to some of the cities participating in UN women's Safe Cities and Safe public spaces global program.
Allow me to also invite our next speaker to join me here if some of them are already here at this point, but we will watch the video now.
Sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women and girls is a universal issue.
Since 2011, UN Women has been working in partnership with local governments, women's rights organizations, UN agencies, businesses, and other civil society partners to create public spaces free of sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women and girls in different settings.
Data collection is crucial.
In more than 60 cities, including Montreal, data were collected to better understand the ways that differently positioned women experience sexual harassment in public spaces.
The local evidence driven actions of each participating Safe City program are informed by a comprehensive framework and global step by step guidance to inform policy and program action.
In Bolivia, indigenous recyclers who work at night on the streets of El Alto and La Paz experience high rates of discrimination and violence.
Evidence has informed policy and legislative change in more than 25 countries.
Municipal policies on gender equality have also been introduced in cities such as Bana Luca, Guatemala City, Madrid, and Monterey.
Cities are invested in strengthening women's sense of safety in public spaces, including by improving lighting, ensuring visible police presence, and incorporating women's safety principles in the design of transportation and other public spaces.
In Quito, Ecuador, local government and other partners have developed safety protocols to address sexual harassment of passengers in transportation.
In Spain, U and women worked with Madrid city authorities to develop the Madrid Zero Violence Multi Year Initiative, which promotes women and girls right to use public spaces free from sexual violence.
For Madrid City Council, this represents an important commitment of Madrid.
We have specialized centers specifically designed to address sexual violence such as Bonita Pastrana.
I think it's extremely important to have local outreach centers in the towns.
Where you can understand what you're experiencing and what is happening.
When you arrived at the center, how did you feel? I felt like I found a safe place to distribute information about violence against women and access to services.
The Safe cities and Safe public spaces for Women and Girls Global Initiative also supports action in rural spaces.
In Assam, India, a comprehensive prevention program is being implemented in a estates in partnership with several companies and authorities.
Women's empowerment clubs were formed where women workers have been supported by UN women to conduct exploratory walks in the estates.
This exercise led to recommendations, including safe transportation and increased access to survivor services, which have been implemented by local companies.
In Kenya, women's economic empowerment strategies have included support to smallholder farmers for access to microfinance.
In Rwanda, support towards the establishment of early childhood development centers has relieved women of the burden of unpaid care work and enabled them to focus on their economic empowerment.
Partner NGOs are also working in local schools as part of their efforts to prevent sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women and girls.
We will now move on the panel discussion.
Allow me to introduce you the five speakers that are joining us.
Irma Aida Hernandez Vo, Mayor Sigelto Panama, Rhona Panama Bimmez.
Violet Cidbutz chair and Africa Regional Representative, Huao Commission and Founding Director of the Women led community based organization, Cibuye Community Health Workers from Kenya.
To my left.
Elian Quo Gutierrez, Director of Internet Bolivia Foundation.
Janne Maggita, Founder and Executive Director Equality for Growth Tanzania.
Welcome to you all and thank you for joining us.
We will now begin with the first round of questions.
Just to say that we have many questions prepared, so if you can keep it around 2.5 minutes, that would be the best.
Thank you.
Mayor, we know that safe cities and public spaces for women and girls cannot be achieved without local government.
We understand that under your leadership, your city is now participating city in the Safe cities Global Initiative.
Can you please tell us more about what local governments can do to ensure that cities, including their public spaces and services, better respond to women's and girls' needs and concerns, what is most needed? Thank you for the question and good evening, everybody.
I come from Samto in Panama, which is the second most important city in my country.
We are the most dense district in the country.
That means that we are a lot of people in a very small place and for you to understand our context, we look a lot like the favelas of Brazil.
We look a lot like the communas in Mejin Colombia.
We are a district with a lot of needs, not with the best reputation, but we are working a lot to change that image.
We are number one in domestic violence.
We are number one in teenage pregnancy.
We have one of the poorest places and dangerous cities in my country.
So it's a dream to be here representing my people, representing my country, and to reach out in this space for the voices of the women that needs a lot of help.
Thank you very much to the Spain and Canadian government and the European Union for making this possible.
You see local government Is where day to day lives of people happen.
We work to make tangible changes.
It's my job to make people feel safe in my district.
We can change the way we walk because we can make or not sidewalks.
We can change the time people takes to go from home to work.
We can change the way people play with their kids at parks.
We can change the way women and girls feel in the space.
We can change the way if a girl feels safe or not in the district.
This is the perfect job to help women and girls to feel a lot safer in The cities.
And now that I have two years being the youngest mayor of my country, I've realized that making a space more safe it's a lot more than just about infrastructure because, yes, we can make the sidewalks, we can do the lightning, we can have police officers in every corner.
We can do best bus stops, but we need to really address the violence that women and girls are living, and we have to live it to change it.
And with UN women in Panama, we have realized that we need an integrated solution.
So we are compiling urban planning ruled by women, the fight against violence of women and girls and empowering the leadership of girls and women and also my favorite building a care system.
This last one, I think is really related to having a safer space.
This connection is especially important because care system and safety are closely linked.
Women right now are caring at disproportional unpaid care work or responsibilities.
And that leads to women and girls having fewer opportunities to work, to study, to be independent, to have autonomy, even to get help when you experience violence.
So I do believe that we can make a safe city or district for girls when we help with that workload.
When we take care of children, when we realize that we need to make care community systems, when we take care of elderly people and disabled people, because that gives women the time to be independent.
And when we have women with more autonomy, we for sure have safer communities.
And for example, in my district, we have three initiatives that I would like to really quick share with you that are helping women to feel safe We have the first mental health clinic that is municipal.
It's with low cost for children and young people to really take care of their mental health and helping mothers and women that are struggling with raising kids to be aware of that problem and having a solution.
We have a municipal soup kitchen, which is like a municipal cafeteria, where we provide food free food for a lot of people making women that they don't have the time to cook, for example, to have a space where they can take their kids, to have a meal and keep the starting, keep working, have the time to feel safe.
And one of my favorites, we have three facilities of daycare, a municipal daycare, and we are focusing on giving special and quality of education.
I have a quick story about this.
One of our teachers went once to a supermarket and the cashier that was attending her started crying.
She started crying and she told, I know you teacher.
You are in the municipal daycare and my kids over there.
My kid has autism and for the first time, you have a Montessori method of education.
So for the first time, I'm being able to control him and I'm having the time to work now.
Thank you so much for giving poor woman in Salto the opportunity to raise kids better.
And having that example fulfills my heart and I'm sure it will make a better society, a better community.
And what it's needed I think you have the answer in spaces like this.
It's what you do best.
You support us.
You believe that the local government have the capabilities because we are closer to the realities of the people.
We are in the streets with the people, and I need The trust that you guys give us, the faith that you guys put on us to really change the reality of women and girls.
We need sustainable investment, we need technical assistance.
We need people to believe that the change of cities, of districts like mine is start from bottom to top and that's what we can do from the local government.
Thank you so much for the question.
Let's thank the Mayor of Smiglito and continue with Violet.
Piot multi level action includes bottom up action and leadership.
You represent the Hairoi Commission, a global partner to the Safe cities and Safe Public spaces program since its inception and a network of grassroot women leaders.
Can you please share why women grassroots involvement is essential to transforming cities and communities? Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Wairu Commission is a global movement of grassros women led organizations and one of the reasons that make us work together as a movement is because the grassros women are agents of development, but also they live the same experiences that we are talking about.
Experiences from violence, which includes women going to the market very early in the morning, for example, where I come from Nairobi and these women are living in informal settlements where there are no lights.
Stages where they need to get to catch up on the bass and often women are mugged or even killed sometimes by the people or raped and many other cases.
Women also who go to work and leave their children home have often had a their children burned in the houses when they're at work because of the electricity shortages and whatever.
Women in all our communities, women come up with solutions from coming up with daycare centers that they alternate on how they care for children, coming up with community watchdog groups, and also being even leading processes like local to local dialogue, which is very common to ensure that the local women can speak to the local government and I'm happy on what my sister has talked about, ensuring that they breach the cap and share and are included in planning processes.
I want to share one quick example of what has been happening in my community where we realize that many women are being denied access to land and when they lose their husbands.
One of the problems that these women have had is that they don't report this in time because reporting timely means that immediately they're being thrown out of the house and someone learns of this, they can be able to come in and start supporting before it goes beyond the land is sold.
That's when we are learning.
About it.
We came up with a tool called hay, where the women document the land case, it's a very simple toll free number, they don't have to pay and they report the alert comes to us in time.
The women can do it even hiding because some of the women were being followed on the way and threatened when they are going to the office of the chief or police when they are being thrown out of homes.
This is a secure tool that the women write and then the alert comes to our office.
Whether it's on Monday, I get the alert on my phone, another paralegal gets the alert on the phone and we can communicate quickly and know how to support these women either by being the ones that report to the chief or being the ones that report to the police so that immediately something can be done.
From this process, we are also able to continue following up in this case, up to the situation of ensuring that the women access justice in time So we have set up processes like coming up with alternative justice resolution mechanisms through our elders and the chiefs because many of these women cannot be able to go to court.
Co is expensive.
That actually has helped us in two years, we had 600 cases and 312 cases were successfully closed through this process of Hackey AR tool.
It is just an example of showing that the grassroots women are an urgent in issues of addressing violence against women.
Which is something that they are also going through and they can be able.
The paralegals, we are training are survivors of these processes and have gone through the same process, so they are not afraid to hold the other woman their hand.
This works very well because when you train the paralegals, at the same time you are training the chiefs, you are bridging the gap between these women and the local authority that they can continually speak together and address this case through alternative means.
This tool also helps us to consolidate all these cases and know what is the trend in cases? Which women are being violated most? Are they married women? Are they widows? Are they girls of this age? Are they the elderly? Then when we are talking, we hold meetings with the local chiefs, we hold meetings with the county government and share the trend of cases, the locations where cases are coming most, which institutions are not responding or responding in time when we call upon them.
That promotes accountability among institutions.
At the same time also this process helps us to influence policy, policies like agricultural policy, how women can get money to be able to improve the land that they are getting back from the county government and even promoting economic empowerment for women.
This is just one case from my country, but all the women in Jamaica, in Nepal, in Nicaragua, in Guatemala, we have different initiatives that women are putting in place depending on their local context.
For me, I want to say that The grassroots women are a urgents and they're strong partners in this process.
But normally they are not treated as partners.
In the development language, the grassroos women are also treated as beneficiaries, vulnerable groups, those women that are suffering, those women that are crying, and not the women that can help to be able to mitigate in this process, the women that we can reach most and the women that we need to support to be able to strengthen their capacity.
Do I mean by strengthening capacity? Strengthening capacity is strengthening these initiatives that the women are doing, resourcing the process that the women are doing, and even appreciating the process the women are doing by compensating, these paralegals are working for free, no one is paying them and they have to travel using their own money to go to the chief's office, to go to the woman that has been affected.
Sometimes even holding this woman to go with her to the court, we have to actually pay in.
Partnership with legal institutions or litigation institution is also key.
We have had these successful cases because one of the partners, TMG Berlin, hired for us a lawyer for one year to sit in our office and listen to these cases and support to ensure that when a lawyer is needed in court, the women have a lawyer to go in court.
It really changed on how these cases were being looked upon.
When these women partner with the litigation organization and are able to really be looked upon as partners, be looked upon as people that can actually understand the government budgets, which money should go to supporting these kind of processes, agricultural process so that this violence against women is not an inbox.
Which puts women in a helpless condition.
But how are we talking about it from the context of improving the lives of women? Because when women are economically empowered, then the violence against women stops and they can also walk to court and report their own cases if they need to be.
These are some of the things that we need to look upon.
How are we discussing? How are we bringing the grassroots women into this dialogue? Are we bringing them as partners, as people to share testimony? I am a widow.
I would be here sharing my story about my position of being a widow.
I'm here today celebrating the success because I have my own war that did not even take me three months to finish because of the knowledge that I have got and the constituency of grassros women that are built.
This is how we need to look at this.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Violet, for bringing your personal reflections and also from Kenny as well.
Thank you so much.
Let me continue with Ileana.
Violence against women and girls continues to be pervasive, affecting them across different spaces, the home, streets, public transportation, work, and online.
Can you comment on why an integrated cross thematic approach to women's safety across the online, offline continuum is key.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the question.
First of all, I want to thank for the invitation and the opportunity to share experiences from Bolivia.
I'm coming here to talk about the digital part of our lives.
We work on digital in the digital space.
It's a space that at least 50% part of our lives.
It's everywhere in every part of our lives.
We know, of course, that digital space is full of opportunities.
It's possible to enjoy our rights there, but it's also a very violent space.
It's an unregulated space.
So especially women are suffering there from different ways of violence, and they are not new.
They are like a continuum, as you correctly say.
It's a continuum from the physical lives and also it goes again to the physical but multiplied because Internet is a mechanism that can multiply and can speed up every process every process that goes inside.
There are different expressions of the same phenomenon.
There is an expression of the same root causes.
Deep seated gender inequality, patriarchal societies, and power imbalances also expresses in these digital lives, and, If it's the same phenomenon, they are two different expressions of the same root causes, but it is different because it accelerates things.
Everything that goes inside, for example, inside the Internet, for example, one woman being harassed for one man physically is one way of feeling this violence but in Internet, for example, the same woman can be harassed by 100 men.
Because Internet allows that.
So the nature of the violence changes, multiplies, speeds up, and both online and physical violence are a result of the same structure, but it needs some of the same solutions, but other solutions.
We have problems with the solutions already without the digital.
We have, for example, some deficits in the judicial systems.
When you take the digital sphere inside of that, it makes even worse because for example, when a victim of digital violence goes to the police, the police will most likely respond But count down.
It's only one or two messages.
It's not a big thing.
It is a big thing.
For example, if a woman somebody takes a picture of a woman and for example, Twitter allow that with AI or without AI, but AI is also a big thing.
They can be a T nude, taking off all the clothes and you take this picture and spread it.
Then nobody can control that because it's not only one person sharing that picture, but a lot of people.
Anybody who receives the picture can also vaalize that picture.
It make it worse.
P and it's very usual judicial systems, they don't understand the problem.
Now we had impunity around women receiving violence and digital violence is even worse because it's not only impunity, but it's also people, the system, the governments don't understand the problem.
Of course, don't see don't notice the need to, take solutions and finance solutions.
In my understanding in my experience working on this violence against women in the Internet, it's like impunity is the strongest word to define, but also this feeling of women that sometimes they even don't know that they are being violated, that they are being going against their will.
So realizing that we are also being violated in different ways with the technology, it's very hard and it's very hard to work with people with women who are going through this experience.
So yeah, it's a continuum, but it's a continuum that multiplies.
It's the short answer.
Thank you.
Mucha Gracia, in particular, violence online.
Let me now continue with Jane.
Around the world, women make up a disproportionate percentage of workers in the informal sector with many of them working as vendors in markets.
Can you share lessons on the integrated approach taken in order to ensure both the safety and viability of market spaces for women? Thank you so much for the opportunity and for the invitation to be here.
I I want to share the experience from the United Republic of Tanzania.
I come from the organization called Equality for Growth that empower informal sector workers in Tanzania, particularly the vulnerable and marginalized women and girls.
We had designed a very unique market model, a project called give entitlement and not abuse, a very unique project to address sexual violence, gender, all forms of gender based violence as they happen in the market.
As you know, we have a high percentage of informal sector workers in Tanzania, where informal economy is actually the primary driver of employment in Tanzania by 71.8% of all workers and because of high level of empowerment among women and the education around women's rights, we see a lot of women moving from private sphere, going to the public sphere to look for survival, to make ends meet.
They transit every day in our major cities taking bs, transportation, but going into what we call them trade hotspot areas such as market, and that's where they look for survival.
But when they go into those cities, in many cases, they will find those municipality and the environment is not gender friendly, that it has not been made ready for them to operate.
With this unique model that we implemented that had deployed an integrated approach and a community led model, we saw a huge success in this program, which was implemented for over ten years.
I will share some of the impact later.
But some of the key lessons that we've learned out of this process is that while women often say that they want to have more meaningful partnership with the police, but we have noted that working with law enforcement alone is not enough.
There has to be an integrated approach, a more consolidated approach, working with the law enforcement agent coupled with other factors, then you will see results in terms of attaining safer cities.
An example would be sustainable change will require things such as community ownership.
It requires strong local institutions such as market committees, strong municipality and council dedicated to address gender based violence.
But also survivor centered support services, continued public education, especially in markets where every day you see new entrants coming into the market, so you have to do continuous public education.
Again, having a supportive public policy, all of these working together coupled with the legal empowerment, then you'll see the results.
That's one of our first key lesson.
The second key lesson we have learned out of this model is that when women feel safe in marketplace, then women become more productive.
Then they become also economically empowered.
When they become more economically empowered, they build that confidence, confidence to negotiate, confidence to interact with the male peers in the market, confidence to demand for gender friendly infrastructure services in the market.
Examples were that when we started implementing this program within three to five years, as one of the very powerful impact was that 76% of the women who were beneficiary of this program became landowners.
This is very powerful success story because in our country, only 80% of the population has our own titled land.
Seeing women 76% become landowners, they've built their own houses.
This is very instrumental in this program.
But again, part of this, it was to increase women participation in decision making and be part of market leadership.
For those who are coming from within East Africa region and maybe SD countries, market is a male dominated sphere.
You'll find a market committee with 12 members, but all of them are men.
They are taking leadership of the market, making decisions on behalf of women.
Through this integrated approach of building and achieving safer cities, we started seeing women contesting for leadership.
For the first time, we saw a woman elected as the chairperson.
Then other women came along her, she was called Amina, and then other women also became chairperson, secretaries of the market and not only taking an opportunity to be in those seats, but also to influence the gender within the market.
They started demanding gender friendly infrastructure services as Mama was saying about access to toilets.
They started demanding for baby croches, facilities to take care of their babies, and so forth and so forth.
Those are some of the success.
The third lessons we've learned is that Local driven solutions, local innovations, when they are supported by governments and partners, they lead into national impact.
Out of those national impact, it can also accelerate into global scale.
We have an example where we started a model in a very small particular market, and then it spilled over into other three markets and out of that, it became a national campaign and from there we think as equality for growth, we have a very exciting model that we are able to share at the international level.
These are the key three learnings, apart from saying that a safe marketplace is not only a human rights imperative, it's also a prerequisite for achieving sustainable development goal, especially SDG number five, gender equality, SDG number eight, decent work and economic growth, SDG number 11, sustainable cities and communities, and SDG, number 16, which about peace justice in strong institution.
When we talk about government investing in this, we saw our president who is a woman president, among few female president in Africa, making a public political declaration, demanding local authorities to protect women vendors in market, and for her to have those political declaration, we think they were so much powerful in terms of influencing local policies.
We saw the Minister for Justice our Minister for gender community development.
She's a woman as well, speaking publicly, launching the National plan of action for ending violence against women strategy number one and strategy number two, allocating budget within our ministry.
Those were various powerful elements into accelerating safer cities.
But we also saw mayors, for example, in revolutionary government of Zibb part of Tanzanian and Maryland, we saw the president of Zanzibar as well as the mayor of Zanzibar taking leads and making Zansb as one of the ambassador cities among the safer city program.
Those were very powerful for us to see a government commitment and commitment at the highest level accelerating the change.
Again, for us to document some of the impact I will share later, It is the results of a huge investment by development partners.
We saw different partners, both bilateral and partners and funders coming out through ten years of investing to see the results that I'll share later.
One of the key results, I would like to share it earlier is that when we saw the gender based violence prevalence rate in market was at 90 60%, like every woman had experienced violence against a women while trading in the market.
But in the course of implementing this, we saw huge decline of the prevalence rate from 96% to 1% in some of the market to 0%, in some of the market to 15% and we think this is the result of the support gotten from government and partners.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Jane, for really making us focus on gender responsive markets for women.
Thank you so much also for your examples.
Let me continue with the second round of questions, but just to remind you if you can keep it at 2 minutes because I wish we could stay longer, but as always, we have room issues here.
Let me start with the mayor again.
Can you please tell us why women's political participation in leading efforts on safe public spaces for women is crucial, including, of course, as a young leader in action.
What changes can happen, whether they be related to care, safety, economic development, or environment when women are in these decision making spaces? As we say in the hoods of San Mili if you don't leave it, you cannot understand it.
You see, I'm a mayor, but at the same time, I'm just a girl.
And I know what it's like to have the keys between your fingers when you have to walk home and it's night.
I know what it feels like to have to send your mom your live location every time you're out of the house.
I know what it feels like to tell your girlfriends, please text me when you get home safe.
I know what it feels like to being caught cold when you walk out on the streets.
And only when you leave These experiences, you can actually do something to change them.
Now as a mayor, I have the possibility to make visible problems that are invisible for people that do not leave these kind of problems.
For example, now I have the possibility to conform a team of women that also have lived experiences like this.
For example, the 50% of all the workers in the municipality of San Milito are women.
We have very important directions led by women.
Urban planning, which is new in my district, is led by a doctor in urbanism.
We have the first municipal engineer in the history of San Milito, which is the construction sector, and we all know that it's male dominated, such as politics and social markets.
The environmental direction, which take care of cleaning the city is led by a woman and having that perspective gives the opportunity to have a safer district to realize that the sidewalk needs to have a special length for the baby stroller.
That we need illumination in bus stops, in corners, in small streets, that we need to address that we have guarantee justice for people that are being aggressive to women in the public space, and we need to call it by its name aggression against women in the streets.
And you feel safe when your mayor address it that way.
And when we participate, We have the opportunity to represent a sector that has been unrepresented for many years.
I do believe that representation matters.
I believe that girls look up to become a mayor in the district because they can see me doing the job, and that shapes priorities.
And I do believe also that when women leave, we get a lot more collective decision making.
We get to consensus.
We put up a more empathic leadership, not a leadership that it's ruled by the force or by who screams louder or by who's more aggressive than another one.
Now I think that we are seeing a great time for making vulnerability and emotions and passion and love.
Not a weakness, but a strength.
And next time you have the opportunity to vote for someone, please think about voting for a woman to get a safer community and country.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Always a powerful reminder how important is voting.
I was mistaken and I thought we had more time.
I thought we have 15 minutes when in reality, we have only 5 minutes left.
Yes.
I'm going to give first the floor and then I'm going to give back to the panelists for a final word.
I very much apologies for that.
Let me first give the floor to Magda Pongo, first Secretary from the European Union's Delegation Human Rights section to deliver remarks from the floor.
Thank you, Madam Assistant Secretary-General, Deputy Executive Director, Excellencys distinguished panelists.
On behalf of the EU, first of all, I wish to thank you and women for organizing this important event, the co sponsors, of course, of Spain and Canada and the inspiring women leaders for sharing their valuable experiences.
I We commend UN women's leadership in advancing the gender responsive implementation of the 2030 agenda and for making the interlinkages between all the SDGs and also linking levels of implementation from the global to the local level, which we see playing out perfectly in this event.
Violence against women and girls online and offline is not only a human rights violation in itself, but it is also a barrier to their participation in public and political life as it was highlighted very excellent way by the panelists.
Moreover, it is often perpetrated with the specific purpose to intimidate women and keep them out of the public space and from leadership roles.
Therefore, making public spaces safe for women and girls is fundamental for enabling their participation in all aspects of life, including education, decent work, political life and activism.
The example about the marketplace was extremely eye opening and fascinating.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
Cities are crucial spaces that can foster inclusion or exclusion, advance or limit gender equality, and cities are also important stakeholders that have a key role to play in implementing international norms on the national and local levels and also providing communities with essential services and we heard a lot of good examples in that regard.
The EU is fully committed to ending all forms of sexual and gender based violence and supports the survivor centered approach through prevention, protection, access to essential services, referral pathways.
Thank you so much for the examples from Kenya about that and women's leadership and participation.
The EU has been making systematic and long term investment in this regard in partnership with the Spotlight Initiative and UN Women's flagship Initiative on Act to end Violence Against Women.
Let me share with you some examples on how the EU supports programs that are directly relevant to today's discussion.
For example, in Bangladesh, the EU funds a 4.8 million program implemented by UN women for ending sexual and gender based violence in public spaces, including in the context of work and in tertiary education settings.
This program builds an enabling environment through policies, systems, and institutional practice, transforms, harful social and gender norms and strengthens the agency and leadership of civil society and women's rights organizations.
In Tanzania, for example, we already heard very inspiring local best practices and the EU supported an 8 million Euro project for ending violence against women and girls and advancing women's leadership in the public sector, also in partnership with UN women.
The project addresses gender based violence in public and private spheres in schools, workplaces, and online while also promoting women's participation in leadership in gender responsive governance.
Um, I have a few other examples, but maybe I would like to highlight one from Bolivia, where there is a lot of advances as well.
The EU is funding programs to strengthen local capacities to provide a coordinated and high quality essential services across health, police, justice, and social services for survivors of gender based violence.
This is another point that I'm taking from this panel, the interlinkages between law enforcement, access to services, referral pathways, and all the systems working together in this regard.
In conclusion, ending violence against all women and girls and ensuring their empowerment requires cooperation between the international, regional, national and local levels, as well as across different sectors.
Cities play a key role in bridging global ambitions and local realities in this regard.
The EU is committed to advance efforts and is an ally in these efforts for all of you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much and of course, the European Union for their support and also their very strong human rights advocate.
Let me give the floor back to Jane Violet and Ileana for a final word.
Let's start with Jane.
Yeah.
Thank you.
As part of concluding, I just wanted to share that we were able to transform a local innovation into a national policy.
As we are talking now, Tanzania has a national guideline to ending violence against women in public space and it caters beyond marketplace.
It caters for mining sites, transportation areas, leisure areas, fishery sites, and this is one of the very excellent model we'd like to share further.
Actually, the government has taken over the program and now it has introduced more than 700 vow deaths at the marketplace, which are being managed by the government.
As part of concluding to this is to Key message to leaders is that we cannot achieve sustainable development goal without investing in the safety, rights and economic empowerment and leadership of women and girls.
Some of the few highlights I would say, as should be priority for leaders humbly requesting is that place women and girls at the center of development of policies and investment and again, invest into locally led solutions and steady strengthen institution and accountability and also build partnership across all sectors.
These are the things that I would like to conclude as part of my presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jane, Violet.
Violet Violet.
Thank you so much.
I think for me, it is very important for us to reorganize and strengthen the initiatives that are already being piloted by grassroos women who are living these experiences and invest also in ensuring that these initiatives can also inform policy because in some of these countries, grassroots women accessing policymakers is really, really hard.
And we know we have organizations that have the convening power to be able to mobilize and bring policymakers to convening that they can also be able to bring grassroots women.
The discussions around violence against women should not happen in separate rooms.
Where you call civil society organizations in a different room, speak to them and you call policymakers in a different one, private sector.
It needs really a process that brings all these partners together in a time that they can be able to share, not just listen to the blueprints that are coming and this is how we want to implement, but hearing and strengthening and understanding what is it that we can invest in, strengthen and learn together and be able to even replicate it in other.
The hacky Ry tool started in one community, but now it is in three counties.
This is a tool that we are trying and testing every time, but sometimes you find that the end of project treating these initiatives as projects also.
At the end of the project in six months, whatever, this is not enough to learn a lot from a project.
Violence against women needs also to be invested in for a long time so that you are learning and building together and really being able to integrate them in existing government systems.
Thank you so much.
Of course, the key messages would be to accelerate the approval of policies and actions to protect women in digital environments as well as physical environments and taking into account the experiences of civil society that is already giving services to victims.
But this responsibility is from the states, not only from the NGOs.
For all of these changes, all these institutionalization, for example, in Bolivia, we Now in the discussion to approve law on digital violence against women.
But for all of these, we also need to ensure funding.
Especially in these times that some fundings are going away.
We know the world is getting crazy.
So we need to ensure this funding for NGOs as well as for public institutions.
If public institutions are going to implement these changes, these regulatory changes and services for victims, they also need funding.
So yeah, I think it's very important to to see the problem as a whole and to understand that we need some resources also to ensure this.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for a very inspiring panel of women's leaders that show us that in very difficult times, change is always possible when women are sitting there at the table and leading the process.
With that, let me thank all of you and give back the floor to you and women for a short final remark.
Thank you so much.
I just wish to connect with the last remark around resourcing and to my sister, ASG Claudia, we know that human rights is under so resourced, 1% of whatever budgets and equally we see regressions.
But when we are in this room in the last 2 hours, Spain, we want to thank the government of Spain.
You gave a public commitment expressed to supporting this work.
The EU spoke on their commitment across a range of partners, government spoke.
So yes, we may not have enough, but we also just want to say thank you.
We want to say thank you for the expressed commitment today and thank you also for all of you who have been here.
That we stand up from this meeting from UN Women, the High Commission for Human Rights, our work with UN Habitat a little bit stronger.
A little bit and not a little bit, much more stronger.
And I The women spoke, the esteemed panelists talked about leadership of the city, leadership in the communities, leadership in governments, leadership in foundations, and we are asking, when are we going to be able to say, good morning, Madam Secretary-General? The women the women are leading from the communities and we need our global institutions and our statistic to run even much more in front of the courage of the women leaders.
I just want to say again, thank you so much and to thank the teams that have really put this together, but back to you.
Always.
Back to you.
Back to you.
No, no.
Thank you so much.
That's what I