PARIS: France’s Minister for Gender Equality Marlene Schiappa and her G7 counterparts on Friday signed a joint declaration to make the issue a “global cause”.
“No country in the world has achieved gender equality between men and women and no one can achieve it alone,” Schiappa said at a signing ceremony.
“This statement marks the clear aim of making gender equality a major global cause,” she added.
France has placed gender inequality at the heart of its 2019 presidency of the G7 group of developed economies — which also includes Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Ministers from the group meeting in northern France last month vowed to enhance coordination to support “women’s participation in peace processes including in their roles as negotiators, mediators and peacebuilders.”
A final statement said the international community must be “mobilised to prevent sexual and gender-based violence in conflict” but also to better help survivors and assist children born as a result of sexual violence in conflict.
Efforts to respond to survivors and victims’ specific medical, psychological and social needs must be continued it said, hailing the efforts by 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege.
The next G7 summit will be held in Biarritz in southwestern France on August 25-27.