By the EU-LAC Women's International Network.
Two years ago, a group of women committed with Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and gender equality came together with a clear purpose: to promote a common gender agenda between the two regions. The EU-LAC Women's International Network (EU-LAC WIN) was born. Since then, we have built a space where more than 60 members representing different institutions, networks and independent experts come together to promote a common gender vision between the two regions.
In our second year, we have achieved significant results. We would like to highlight the EU-LAC Gender Equality Forum, held in Berlin in partnership with the UN Network and GIZ, which brought together more than 140 representatives of civil society, international organisations and governments from both regions. The Forum was a crucial space to address key issues such as climate action and gender, overcoming socio-economic inequalities, political leadership and sustainable peace-building. The roadmap we developed during the Forum was presented at the EU-CELAC Summit, which brought together the Heads of State and Government of both regions and other high-level leaders for the first time in eight years. We explored the potential of implementing feminist foreign policies, mainstreaming gender equality in institutions and environmental policies, and urgently addressing gender-based violence in all its dimensions.
On our second anniversary, we are celebrating the success of our climate and gender thematic line on climate action and gender. Together with our partners at the United Nations Development Programme, we held three high-level dialogues with over 500 participants. The result is a policy brief that highlights the urgency of seeking synergies between the gender and environment agendas, advocates a territorial approach and a comprehensive approach, and calls for the creation of long-term theories of change. In the coming months, we will continue to highlight the critical importance of including women in climate governance and ensuring that new jobs resulting from the transition to a low-carbon and equitable economy benefit women, while recognising the negative impacts of their exclusion.
This year we also focused on the urgent care agenda. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of paid and unpaid labour for the sustainability of life, the functioning of our economic systems and our societies. It is therefore necessary to move towards a new model of development that puts care at the heart of a transformative, sustainable and equitable recovery. We launched our thematic line on care at the XV LAC Regional Women's Conference in Buenos Aires and have held five dialogues to date, working closely with our partners UN Women, ECLAC, the Global Alliance for Care and the National Institute of Women of Mexico.
On this second anniversary, we have reaffirmed that by working as a network we can achieve more significant changes. The Network has the potential to be a vehicle for intergovernmental exchange and partnership building. This is our call to those watching this video: Join the Network and let's move forward to put gender equality at the heart of strategic relations between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.