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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday termed violence against women a "big cancer" and called for an "emergency plan" to tackle it in every country.
Interacting with students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, he also pointed out that women activists and politicians are targeted on social media.
The UN is working to achieve gender parity within its own organisation, he said.
"I must confess that there is one problem that I did not manage to solve. Many people thought -- and I fully respect that - the secretary general of the United Nations must be a woman," he said.
More than half the women at the top management level in the UN are women, Guterres said, adding that they occupy posts like head of the department of political affairs and mission heads in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Moral imperative
In India, as across the world, more needs to be done to advance gender equality and women's rights, the top UN official said.
This is a "moral imperative" and also a multiplier for prosperity and sustainability, he said, adding that no society can reach its full potential without "equal rights and freedoms for women, men, girls and boys."
“Violence against women…is a matter of not only importance but it is an emergency. Because things are getting worse, not better,” the UN secretary general said.
Guterres also pointed out that “terrible campaigns” are run against women activists and women politicians on social media. Violence through social media is “enormous”, he noted.
“Every country should have an emergency plan to fight violence against women," he said, adding that it should cover all aspects such as training of the police, and judiciary and making sure that "there is clear accountability in society in relation to violence against women.”
“We live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture,” Guterres said, adding that gender parity is necessary at the top level so that decisions are taken in a way which makes gender equality a "downstream phenomenon." There is also a need to support all women's organisations and have a bottom-up approach to generate equality, he added.
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