India highlights country's gender equality campaigns at UN

India's Permanent Representative to UN Ruchira Kamboj said that PM Modi's leadership has been instrumental in highlighting the importance of gender equality, women empowerment through impactful campaigns such as 'Beti Bachao', 'Beti Padao'.

"The ancient civilizational values and cultural ethos of India have taught us to recognize gender equality and the empowerment of women as one of the key tenants of our society," the Permanent Representative to the UN said at CSW67 Side Event "A World We Women and Girls Want: Technology Enabled Social and Economic Advancement".

"We are also guided by the leadership of our prime minister who has been instrumental in highlighting the importance of these issued through impactful campaigns such as 'Beti Bachao', 'Beti Padao'. Programs such as 'Digital India', 'MyGov' platform have become phenomenal success stories in the last nine years in creating a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy in India," Kamboj said at the event.

She said that the Indian government has also taken numerous citizen-centric digital initiatives with a greater focus to enable access for women to finance, credit, technology and employment.

These initiatives have focused on providing major assistance to women in distress, preventing violence against women and promoting women's equal participation in every sphere of society, she said.

Giving an example, Kamboj said: "The government of India has opened bank accounts. Bank accounts for over 482 million people of which more than 55 per cent of account holders were women. During the COVID pandemic, this initiative helped in direct benefit transfer to nearly 200 million women."

(ANI)