Qatar committed to promoting women’s rights

The State of Qatar stressed full commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in accordance with the Islamic Sharia and social values; noting that enhancing the rights of women is a part of promoting the family as the natural unit and basis of society. The remarks came during a speech by Asma Neji Al Amri, the First Secretary of the U.S. Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and member of Qatar’s delegation to 67th UN General Assembly before the Social, Humanitarian Cultural Affairs Committee (Third Committee). The State of Qatar, which has ratified the major international treaty on women’s rights, firmly believes in the importance of empowering women to exercise all their political, social and economic rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws, she explained. The State of Qatar has made remarkable efforts to modernize education, in general, and education of women, in particular; enabling women to engage in the labour market and participate in production activities, she said. In this context, the Qatari official highlighted the pioneer role played by HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser in promoting humanitarian affairs and empowering women through her economic, social and development initiatives and contributions at the national, regional and international levels. She also reaffirmed Qatar’s keenness to establish institutional mechanisms to promote and protect women’s rights and working to promote women’s rights and end discrimination against them through a number of governmental agencies such as the Supreme Council for Family Affairs and the Qatar Foundation for the Protection of Women and Children. Within the framework of assessment of achievements and progress attained towards realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in the State of Qatar, three reports prepared in collaboration between the Statistics Authority and the Permanent Population Committee under the supervision of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) were so far released, she said. The recent report of 2010 shows that there has been significant progress in meeting the MDG and reveals that the State of Qatar has already achieved most of the MDG goals including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving basic universal education, reducing child and maternal mortality, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases as well as ensuring environmental sustainability and global partnership for development, she explained. She further reaffirmed Qatar’s commitment to the importance of continued dialogue, consultation and work for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, referring to The Third Ministerial Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) on the Advancement of Women hosted by the State of Qatar on 12-14 February 2012.