Geneva, 22 October 2025
151st IPU Assembly
Madam Vice-President of the IPU / Madam/Mr. President of the Assembly,
Madam Ambassador,
Distinguished delegates,
It is a great pleasure to stand before you not only as Secretary General of the IPU but also as Chair of the Global Board of the International Gender Champions, alongside Ambassador Fuentes from Chile, my fellow Gender Champion and member of the Board.
2025 is a special year. We mark not only the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the 25th anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. As you know, the IPU Forum of Women Parliamentarians is also turning 40, and we are marking the 10th anniversary of the International Gender Champions, a network of international leaders across international organizations, permanent missions and civil society committed to advancing gender equality in multilateral spaces.
These are milestones we must celebrate, these are agendas we must recommit to, these are legacies we must cherish.
We know progress cannot be taken for granted. We know there is pushback on women’s rights. We know achievements made can be lost. So promoting gender equality must be an everyday endeavour.
Now is a time to look at the progress made and continue to push forward. This is why we made gender equality this year’s priority theme at the IPU.
And I am proud that, under our shared umbrella of the International Gender Champions, and in collaboration with the IGC Secretariat and Women at the Table, we are launching the second edition of the Gender-Responsive Assemblies Toolkit. We were honoured to unveil it at the UNGA80 Parliamentary Event a few weeks ago in New York, and I am delighted to bring it here today.
This Toolkit draws on the experience of several institutions within the IGC network — including the IPU —that have made real progress towards inclusion in multilateral spaces.
Experience shows that when environments and policies are enabling, leadership is shared equally, and decisions deliberately advance gender equality.
Experience also shows that while leadership commitment is crucial, we cannot just rely on the leader of the day. Progress can only be sustained through institutionalized policies, mindsets shift and intentional measures to lift barriers to true equality.
The Toolkit is both a guide and a call to ambition. It sets clear standards for inclusive assemblies and challenges us to make parity a living principle, not a distant goal.
And I am particularly proud to see so many examples in this toolkit coming from the IPU.
The IPU has been a pioneer, with a Forum of Women Parliamentarians set up 4 decades ago. As early as in the 1980s, we adopted our first quota for women on the Executive Committee. Since then, we have revisited these quotas and created new ones. Delegations close to the gender parity standard are recognized, while those that are single-sex face limits on their voting rights.
Most recently, we have taken a firm stand against harassment and further integrated gender equality into all areas of our work. Parity is now embedded in our Statutes and Rules. These steps have changed not only our procedures but also our culture. Today, nearly 40 per cent of delegates at IPU Assemblies are women. We are not yet at parity, but determination anchored in both norms and practice delivers real change.
That is what the Gender-Responsive Assemblies Toolkit is about. So, I call to all of you: take this Toolkit to heart. Use it. Share it. Adapt it.
Let it guide your work in your own parliaments and assemblies. Take it to your foreign ministries, so that they also implement it as part and parcel of your country’s engagement in multilateral spaces. It is a tool built with you and for you.
Thank you.
The second edition of the Gender-Responsive Assemblies Toolkit can be found here.