9 April 2025 – Astana – The Deputy Secretary General of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) Mrs.Zhang Ling participated in Extended Gender Theme Group meeting organized by the UN Resident Coordinator Office in Kazakhstan.
The meeting presented the results of 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women convened at UN headquarters in March 2025, as well as the six key actions to make faster strides forward to fulfilling the commitments made in the Beijing Platform for Action and for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Representatives from UN Women and Kazakhstan’s Commission for Women, Family and Demographic Policy, shared updates on the new UN Cooperation Framework and the country’s national progress on achieving SDG 5 on gender equality. The meeting participants noted the importance of accelerating implementation of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which remains the most revolutionary plan on gender equality to date, but progress over the past 30 years has been slow.
During the meeting, Ms. Zhang briefed participants on CICA’s advancing women agenda, highlighting a major initiative put forward by the Azerbaijani Chairmanship — the establishment of the CICA Women Council. Ms. Zhang noted that the Draft Regulation on the Women Council is currently under active consideration by Member States, with broad support already expressed. Mrs. Zhang stressed that this will be a significant contribution of CICA to the women affairs in the region, given the pan-Asian outreach of Conference, and will enable to unite more women and men to join the common efforts to achieve gender equality goals in broader scales and accelerated steps.
The meeting encouraged all participants to actively engage in advocacy campaigns promoting women’s rights and — especially in light of milestone events such as UN80 and Beijing+30.
