Gender equality key to achieving UN SDGs: PM

Prime Minister Sanna Marin said Friday the world cannot achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in the 2030 Agenda without achieving SDG5 -- gender equality, as the UN observed the International Women's Day, which falls on March 8.

At the UN observance themed "I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women's Rights," Marin said as the UN launched a Decade of Action for the SDGs, the world needs to ensure every human being has their rights respected and can reach their full potential for the goals to be fulfilled.

As the world's youngest serving prime minister, 34-year-old Marin said: "We, as world leaders, have all the tools needed to make changes that secure the future we want," demonstrating her commitment to Generation Equality.

Being a female leader herself, Marin lamented that the number of female heads of state and government is only 21, while there are 193 UN member states and more than half of the global population are women and girls.

Taking pride in her home country's lead in gender equality, she recalled that Finland was the first country in the world to grant women full political rights, both the right to vote and the right to run for office.

Currently, women lead all the five parties in Finland coalition government and four of those leaders are under the age of 35.

However, Marin underscored that no country in the world has achieved gender equality, and "Finland is no exception."

She said the two challenges her country faces is inequalities in the labor market and violence against women and girls, which she proposed policy solutions to tackle.

"The Finnish government wants to ensure that girls and women are empowered to become agents and innovators in the digitized world," Marin said. "Generation Equality will allow us to strengthen our commitment and most importantly to put women and girls' rights at the center of technology, innovation and digital transformation."