FIIAPP on International Women’s Day

Latin American and European leaders recently re-affirmed in Santiago de Chile “the need to increase women’s power by strengthening their political participation and leadership, economic autonomy and equal and balanced participation in the workforce, and reiterated their firm commitment to eradicating all types of violence and discrimination against women and gender-based murder which is the most serious manifestation”.

The FIIAPP, through EUROsociAL as a Euro-Latin American dialogue and exchange programme provides for this mandate, and supports the creation “of a bi-regional space for exchanging experiences and cooperating on gender issues to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women in the different spheres of CELAC-EU dialogue through the activities that have already been initiated by incorporating the gender focus transversally in all areas”.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the European Union (EU) agreed at the Santiago Summit to “constantly work to eradicate poverty, foster equality, particularly gender equality, and for social inclusion”. This particular issue became an action in this Santiago Declaration as gender was included in the CELAC-EU 2013-15 Action Plan with an aim to prioritise it in the context of bi-regional relations to highlight the political will of both regions to guarantee gender equality and the protection, exercise and promotion of women’s rights.