Colleagues from across our region, my greetings to all of you.
Thank you for joining this special session to commemorate International Women’s Day 2025. This year’s theme is ‘For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment’. I am pleased that you are joining this discussion today, showing your support for the vital cause of uplifting half of humanity.
This is a cause that has been close to my heart for a long while, and this is why it is one of the pillars of our Regional Roadmap. I am grateful to our Member States for endorsing this vision and giving us a mandate to fulfil it.
Women’s Day is an opportunity to pause and reflect on some important questions.
How can we contribute to the global upliftment of women and girls?
How can we better integrate gender in our work and life?
Can we implement our health programs in a way that ALL women and girls are included?
There are questions we need to ask ourselves beyond Women’s Day. I will ask you all to continue to search for the best answers to these, because it is incumbent on us to continually refine and improve our interventions. The answers to these questions need to become a part of all that we do, every single day.
Our region has made heartening and encouraging progress on gender and health.
In most of our countries, the gender gap in women’s labor force participation has narrowed. For example, in Bhutan, the participation of women in the labor force from 2018 to 2020 increased from nearly 56% to 64%.
Total Fertility Rate has decreased for most of the countries in the region over decades.
Between 2010-2020, the Maternal Mortality Ratio in the region declined 3.5 times faster than the global MMR reduction – a 41% decline in our region, versus 12% globally. This accelerated progress has enabled our region to be on track for achieving the SDG target on MMR by 2030.
The 2024 WHO global survey report tells us that all our countries have in place national guidelines and policies on sexual and reproductive health, family planning and contraception, STI treatment and related health issues.
Thanks to all of you, we have made significant progress. And yet, as we know, we still have much more to do.
Assessments show that at the present rate of progress, it will take five generations to close the gender gap. The latest UN Asia Pacific SDG Progress report (2025) says that significant data gaps continue to limit a comprehensive assessment of progress towards achieving SDG 5 on gender equality.
Sadly, we have seen gender and equity regress in various parts of the world. This is happening at a time of much challenge and change within our organization also. It is vital that in the middle of this turbulence, gender equality in health does not get deprioritized.
There can be no sustainable development without the development of the health of women.
We understand that women’s health must be addressed within the full context of their lives. Women and girls face unique challenges based on their location, identities, and various other intersecting factors.
Therefore, investment in women and girls is a pillar of our Regional Roadmap for Results and Resilience. Gender and health is also a key component of our Country Cooperation Strategies with member states. Finally, advancing gender equality to overcome barriers to health is an overarching principal of GPW14, our WHO global strategy for 2025-28.
As some of you may know, we have committed to ensuring health for all through the ‘4P’ approach:
Promote: Advocating for investment in women and girls across health and related sectors like education, water and sanitation etc.
Provide: Prioritizing unmet health needs and addressing access related barriers for women and girls.
Protect: Enhancing female representation in decision making to catalyze inclusive policy planning and preparedness.
Power and perform: Identifying hotspots of health risks for women and girls for targeted action.
This 4P approach must be powered by regional cooperation and digital solutions for accelerated action and widespread service coverage.
Finally, in our role as drivers of thought leadership on Health for All in SEAR, it is imperative that we apply the gender lens to all our health programming and operations across all streams of WHO’s work.
When we empower her, we empower the world.
Thank you.