Today Rwanda joins the global family in celebrating the important International Women’s Day. It is worth recalling that, historically, Women’s Day was born from labour movements at the beginning of the 20th Century that were protesting against the difficult working conditions for women as the industrialization process was picking up momentum.

Since then, women’s movements followed at different levels of institutions and governments until 28 February 1909, when the first Women’s Day was observed in the United States of America. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in 1945, was the first international agreement to affirm the principle of equality between women and men.

Since then, the UN has helped create a historic track record of internationally-agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide. It is against that backdrop that the year 1975 was declared the International Women’s Year and since then the United Nations and many countries around the World started celebrating the International Women’s Day (IWD) on 8 March of each year.

The IWD is a day when the International community, and women in particular, celebrate their achievements but also appraise the challenges that still remain towards the attainment of the desired gender equity. The International women’s Day this year is being celebrated at a historic moment, because of the recent ushering in of the new global development agenda, underpinned by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, also referred to as Agenda 2030. The agenda 2030 constitutes an unprecedented framework for global development cooperation that all countries, both developed and developing countries, have firmly committed themselves to implement effective from 1st January 2016 as a successor to the Millenium Development Goals.

This is where this year’s IWD took its theme: "PLANET 50-50: STEP IT UP FOR GENDER EQUALITY”. The Step It Up” campaign asks governments to renew national commitments that will close the gender equality gap – from laws and policies to national action plans and adequate investments. From the July 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) for Financing for Development (FfD), to UN Sustainable Development Summit and the last December Paris COP 21, we have seen all the global stakeholders unanimously agreeing to position Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (GEWE) at the heart of Sustainable Development.

The 2030 Agenda positions the Beijing Platform for Action as a foundational framework and a normative motherboard for sustainable development. Thus, all the gender-related goals and targets in the 2030 Agenda are transformed into sustainable development ones! The paradigm shift is also that a comprehensive, transformative, and standalone SDG 5 "to achieve” - not just promote – "gender equality and empower all women and girls” has been set, along with six targets and three means of implementation.

Gender equality is also integrated across 11 other SDGs including those on poverty, hunger, health, education, water and sanitation, employment, just and peaceful societies, sustainable cities, and economic growth. Data and follow-up and review are to be gender-sensitive. There is an overarching commitment to systematically mainstream gender perspectives into the implementation of the whole 2030 Agenda and a determination to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, including through engaging men and boys.

There is broad consensus that Rwanda has made remarkable progress towards achieving all the MDGs targets except the one for halving poverty and stunting. But even in these areas the trend has been quite positive. Maternal death was reduced sharply from 1,071 to 210 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2000 and 2014, while the gender gap ratio in primary and secondary schools was completely bridged. Rwanda is leading in having more women in leadership positions as proxied by the ratio of women representation in the Cabinet and Parliament where women occupy 64% of the seats. Worldwide there has been slow progress in increasing the number of women in off –farm employment, but Rwanda is on the right path in terms of long term strategy to address that issue.

The current policy and regulatory framework in favor of women empowerment gives upbeat prospects. This brings all realistic development thinkers and practitioners to truly believe that while the SDG targets might look too ambitious for some countries, it is seen as a continuation of an inclusive sustainable development journey that Rwanda has already undertaken well before the adoption of the 2030 agenda.

This provides another opportunity to pay tribute to the foresight and visionary leadership of H.E President Paul Kagame for taking such revolutionary steps towards empowerment of women and promotion of gender equity. As part of the UN Sustainable Development Summit held in New York in September 2015, Some Heads of States and Governments reiterated their explicit commitment to achieve parity in all the spheres of life by 2030. It is that pledge that is referred to as "Step It Up Commitment”.

The Government of Rwanda also honorably represented at the Summit, reiterated its commitment which came as a reinforcement to a similar commitment made by H.E. Paul Kagame the President of the Republic of Rwanda as one of the few selected global figures who accepted to serve as HeForShe Champions . It aims at achieving gender parity in financial inclusion in particular by 2030, in waged non-farm employment through tripling the number of girls enrolled in Technical and Vocational Training by the year 2020 as well as bridging the digital divide between men and women by 2020.

These three areas are seen as constituting high potentials for increasing women’s participation in economic activities and therefore their full empowerment. To achieve this noble goal of parity by 2030, there is need for integrated action by governments, development partners, private sector, foundations and civil society to address the SDGs through cross-cutting policy solutions, technological innovations and targeted financing.

There is much to believe that the Government of Rwanda would replicate the MDGs performances in the case of agenda 2030 implementation. There is no doubt at all that the ongoing SDGs gap analysis and subsequent prioritization and full domestication of the agenda 2030 will dedicate a special focus on the call for parity. I am confident that with the support of One UN Rwanda Team and other Development partners, Rwanda will keep up and Step It up more than any other country for Gender Equality. The writer is the UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative, Rwanda