Executive Board of UN Women 1st Regular Session 15 February 2021 Opening session Statement by the Deputy Permanent Representative of to the Mr. Ridas Petkus

Madam Executive Director, Mr. President,

Everyone hoped that 2020 would be the year for , marking the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, the 20th anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, and the first year of the Decade of Action on the Sustainable Development Goals. The year of gender equality turned out to be year of two devastating pandemics – COVID- 19 and the „shadow pandemic“, impacting the very fragile progress in of all women and girls, deepening pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems.

Since the very start of the pandemic, women have been fighting on the frontlines of the response, as healthcare workers, teachers, essential staff. Women leaders have showed an exemplary dealing with the pandemics, as countries led by women were less affected and had quicker recovery. Sadly, but research shows, that more women have lost their jobs due to the impact of COVID-19 than men: making up almost two-fifths of the global labour force women have suffered more than half of total job losses from the crisis. As usually carrying the highest-burden of housework, they were the ones who had the greatest epidemic-related costs due to school closures and the health risks posed to elderly family members.

COVID-19 also caused an unprecedented increase in all forms of and girls, both offline and online, including in . Lithuania was not an exception, as numbers of domestic violence crimes in Lithuania have increased at least about 20%, not to mention the unreported cases.

I dare to hope, that the hardship of tackling the pandemic and the exposed injustice and inequalities encouraged us to reconsider the way we want our societies to look like. During the pandemic, we have seen exemplary women leadership, we once again witnessed the importance of civil society partners, women’s rights organizations in fighting the gender-based violence, providing multifaceted assistance. We have seen the EU-UN joint initiative “Spotlight” expanding further. In Lithuania, the end of 2020 was highlighted by a new Government with 6 out of 14 women ministers, together with a Prime Minister and Head of Parliament who are also women. We need to use this momentum and double our efforts in making gender-equality the guiding principle. We must continue to strengthen our legal frameworks, and ensure full, effective and accelerated implementation of international commitments with regard to gender equality, taking into account the needs of all women and girls, including those facing multiple and intersecting forms of violence and discrimination.

On this occasion of the UN WOMEN Executive Board 1st Regular Session, Lithuania would like to thank UN WOMEN for its tremendous work during the pandemic and its efforts of promoting gender equality as one of the core elements of the global COVID-19 response. Lithuania is strongly committed to working together and building back better in the pursuit of an equal and inclusive future.