UN Women Press Release Focus is on initiatives with high impact on women’s political and economic empowerment. United Nations, New York, 1 March 2012 — At a high-level event at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, Michelle Bachelet, Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director, issued a

Soroptimist International Assistant Programme Director, Anusha Santhirasthipam, was selected to address CSW member states and civil society representatives during a panel on the role of gender-responsive governance and institutions for the empowerment of rural women. Soroptimist International called Government attention to the following three areas: 1.     Information Women farmers often struggle

UN DESA Press Release “For 50 years, we have been working together to ensure that development is primarily about people,” underscored Mr. Sha Zukang, UN DESA’s Under-Secretary-General and the Rio+20 Secretary-General, at the opening of the 50th session of the Commission for Social Development on February 1st. The session, with its

Have you ever wondered what role UNESCO plays? Here, SI UNESCO Representatives Marie Christine De La Barbelais and Dominique Mertz report back from the 36th UNESCO Conference where the role and achievements of UNESCO in 2011 were reviewed: This was the title of the opening statement to the 36th UNESCO

SI UNESCO Representaive, Rina Dupriet, attended the January meeting of the NGO Joint Programmatic Commisson for Sustainable Development. Severals proposals were forwarded for consideration by Rio+20, closely matching the priorities of Soroptimist International: - Poverty eradication - Creation of safe water supplies - Empowerment of people through education and leadership

Last week, SI UN Representatives Alice Odingo and Rose Mwangi attended a series of meetings at the UN Environmental Programme  (UNEP) in Nairobi. Global Major Groups and Stakeholders Forum (GMGSF): 18-19th February SI attended the second day of the meeting.  A great deal of discussion centred on Rio+20 and how

Women, men and children came out in force to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day on 8 March 2011 with Women for Women International's Join me on the Bridge campaign. There were 464 events in 70 countries on 6 continents worldwide - and Soroptimists were there too! SI Cambridge,

In September, Soroptimist International joined with over 90 NGOs to sign a statement calling upon the Member States of the UN to include mental health as a non-communicable disease (NCDs), in recognition of the fact that good health requires mental well being in addition to physical well being. This was

December saw some changes to Soroptimist International’s representation at the UN Centres. We were sad to say goodbye to long standing representatives Yseult Kaplan and Christine Dagain who represented SI at UNESCO in Paris, and Linda Stillman and Andrea Mills who represented SI in New York. Yseult represented SI at

UNCSD report back from the first round of negotiations on the zero draft document, New York, January 27th-30th 2012: Three days of initial negotiations over the proposed outcome document for Rio+20 concluded today with comments and suggestions from Member States, United Nations agencies and a variety of civil society actors.