Dr Glenville Ash­by

New York-Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar spoke at the Women's Po­lit­i­cal Par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Unit­ed Na­tions on Mon­day. In her open­ing re­marks, she called for greater glob­al in­volve­ment of women in the po­lit­i­cal process. Us­ing her po­lit­i­cal as­cen­dan­cy as an ex­am­ple of "courage, com­mit­ment, and con­vic­tion," she chal­lenged gov­ern­ments to ho­n­our their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to build an eq­ui­table world where women are em­pow­ered.

"I urge every­one to sum­mon the po­lit­i­cal and the fi­nan­cial will to ho­n­our our com­mit­ments. We must en­sure that our gen­er­a­tion leaves a lega­cy of 50 per cent of women in po­lit­i­cal and oth­er spheres of de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and de­liv­ers tan­gi­ble poli­cies and ac­tion pro­grammes aimed at im­prov­ing the lives of women and girls," she told the packed con­fer­ence. Cit­ing the Chi­nese proverb that "Women hold up half of the sky," Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she en­vi­sioned a world where women com­prised "half of our leg­is­la­ture, half of our lo­cal gov­ern­ments and half of our state boards and pri­vate sec­tor board rooms."

She ex­pressed her de­ter­mi­na­tion to lev­el the play­ing field with the new­ly cre­at­ed Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment and her in­ten­tion to in­tro­duce what she called "gen­der-re­spon­sive bud­gets and gen­der re­spon­sive na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan­ning" aimed at achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty. She al­so ad­vo­cat­ed men­tor­ing ini­tia­tives for young women to be­come more at­tuned to the po­lit­i­cal process. "Such pro­grammes will iden­ti­fy and en­cour­age women to stand as can­di­dates-lo­cal­ly and na­tion­al­ly," she not­ed.

Prime Min­ster Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar was joined by more than 20 high-lev­el po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in­clud­ing Dil­ma Rousse­eff, Pres­i­dent of Brazil; Roza Otun­baye­va, Pres­i­dent of the Kyr­gyz Re­pub­lic; Dr Lil­ia Labi­di, Min­is­ter of Women's Af­fairs, Re­pub­lic of Tunisia; Hi­lary Clin­ton, US Sec­re­tary of State, and Michelle Bachelet, UN Un­der-Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, UN En­ti­ty for Gen­der Equal­i­ty and Em­pow­er­ment of Women. The event was or­gan­ised by the Unit­ed States, UN Women, Brazil, Trinidad and To­ba­go, the EU, and the UNDP.