New York, 14 February 2019:
“Under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the Government of Bangladesh is working relentlessly to establish an inclusive, just and equitable society through addressing inequality. The means that the Government has adopted for addressing inequality are mainly: poverty eradication; access to education, health, employment & social security; and financial inclusion” –said the Permanent Representative (PR) of Bangladesh to the UN Ambassador Masud Bin Momen at the General Debate of the 57th Commission for Social Development (CSocD), held at the UN Headquarters, today.
In his statement, the PR also highlighted numerous endeavours of Sheikh Hasina’s government, such as: “whole-of-society” approach aiming to ‘no one is left behind’, advancing women’s participation, achieving gender parity in primary and secondary school enrollment, rendering government’s support to women and youth to contribute to country’s mainstream economic activities, providing equal care to elderly, widow and dependent parents, strengthening national family-centered policies and programmes, setting up skills and knowledge as the key driving forces under the “Vision 2021”, easy access to ‘micro saving’ schemes specially for women, promoting of women entrepreneurship and equal pay for work of equal value and embedding gender equality in all our policy making.
Ambassador Masud said, “Bangladesh has been doing remarkably well in advancing its overall socio-economic development with sustained improvement in the human development index”. He also mentioned about BD’s first times fulfillment of graduation criteria. He also shared relevant national statistics and indicators in this regard.
“To boost income growth, we recently reviewed twice the minimum wages of our ready-made garments, the largest export earning sector, where women constitute 80% of the 4.5 million workers. Women in Bangladesh are now working side by side their male counterparts in almost every sphere of life. According to the Global Gender Gap index 2018, Bangladesh has closed over 72% of its overall gender gap” Ambassador Masud mentioned.
Theme of the 57th CSocD is “addressing inequalities and challenges to social inclusion through fiscal, wage and social protection policies”.
It may be mentioned, Bangladesh is a member of the Commission for Social Development (CSocD). The 57th CSocD commenced on 11 February and will end on 21 February.
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