G7 development ministers’ meeting focuses on empowering women and girls (From Global Affairs Canada )

June 2, 2018 - Whistler, British Columbia – Global Affairs Canada

Advancing gender equality is the most effective approach to eradicating extreme poverty and building a more peaceful, inclusive and prosperous world. Recent estimates indicate that countries are losing $160 trillion in wealth because of differences in lifetime earnings between women and men. Canada and its G7 partners have a shared commitment to strengthening the empowerment of women and girls in development policy and international assistance.

Today, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, concluded the meeting with her G7 counterparts under the broader G7 leaders’ theme of Investing in Growth that Works for Everyone. The meeting, which took place from May 31 to June 2, 2018, in Whistler, British Columbia, marked a valuable and timely opportunity to advance solutions to pressing global development challenges and to make progress on shared priorities, including addressing gender equality in humanitarian action, supporting adolescent girls as key change agents for equality and future prosperity, and accelerating innovation to maximize the impact of development assistance.

Canada brought young women leaders to the G7 table to ensure those directly affected by the issues being discussed could offer their insights and be an integral part of finding innovative solutions for real change and positive outcomes.

The outcomes of this meeting will lay the groundwork for the discussions G7 leaders will have in Charlevoix, including those on girls’ and women’s education and on innovative financing for development. Members of the Gender Equality Advisory Council for Canada’s G7 Presidency were invited to join in a portion of the ministers’ discussions.

Minister Bibeau and her G7 counterparts adopted four declarations in Whistler and agreed on a number of concrete actions to drive positive change in the international assistance landscape, including:

• making gender equality central to development cooperation;
• unlocking the power of adolescent girls for sustainable development by adopting integrated approaches to address the multiple barriers to their full empowerment and rights as human beings;
• addressing gender equality in humanitarian action that takes into account distinct needs and capacities;
• strengthening protection from sexual exploitation and abuse in international assistance; and
• accelerating innovation for development impact by encouraging new ways of working, investing in locally driven solutions, using evidence to drive decision making, taking intelligent risks, and by promoting inclusivity and engaging women and girls as both recipients and resources of innovation.