Mister Chair,
Distinguished Delegates,
1. At the outset, on behalf of the Lao PDR, I would like to express my highest appreciation and gratitude to the United Nations for organizing the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women to review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly.
2. Since nineteen ninety-five, Lao PDR has been fully committed to implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action to promote gender equality and empower women and girls. It is one of the top priorities in advancing nation effort to empower female and male in all sphere of political, economic, social, cultural and family rights, the Gender Gap Report in 2024 showed Gender Equality Index is zero point seven.
3. Enhancing women economic empowerment by improving the legal system, competitiveness, reducing obstacles to business growth, trade costs and enhancing of the business units and accessing credit for SME enterprises in each sector. Women-owned businesses account for forty-eight point thirty seven percent. Provide vocational training and technical skills for famers and poor people such as: agricultural production, farming, animal husbandry, handicrafts, financial services, and business operations as well as some grant to carry out income-generating activities.
4. Over the past 10 years, the female labor force participation rate increased to forty-one point nine percent and the employment rate increased to fifty-four point two percent. Adopted a social protection strategy in 2020 to provide quality and universal social protection services such as social security and health care workers.
5. In the education and sports sectors have put in place specific measures and pilot programs, such as: providing scholarships to poor students and ethnic girls in rural areas, providing school lunch program building dormitories for students; project on developing the quality of education and sports in poor districts and provide a mobile teacher project that assigns teachers in that area to teach in order to facilitate Lao language communication at the basic level.
6. Enhancing healthcare services by prioritizing the development of infrastructure, optimizing human resources, and modernizing medical equipment. Recent data reflects a significant decrease in the maternal mortality rate and the birth rate with medical assistance has increased each
year.
7. Strengthened its national mechanisms for assisting women and girls who are victims of violence by adopting the "No Wrong Door" approach, ensuring that victims can access essential services through the SOP on Health, Justice and Police, Social and Governance Coordination and Referral pathway.
Madam/Mister Chair
8. Despite all the progress, many challenges remain to be addressed. On this note, the Lao PDR looks forward to further strengthening collaboration with all development partners and other stakeholders in the pursuit of our common endeavour to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls in the Lao PDR.
9. I would like to reiterate the Lao Government’s commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action to achieve gender equality and women empowerment and girls through the implementation of the National Socio-Economic Development Plan and the National Action Plan for Gender Equality in 2026-2030.
10. I wish the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women a great success.
Thank You.
