President Michael D Higgins has accepted a United Nations invitation to be a global champion for the rights of women and girls.

Addressing a conference in Dublin today to mark the 20th anniversary of the UN Beijing Platform for Action on women’s rights, the President said he was to be one of ten world leaders involved in the UN HeforShe campaign, which seeks to engage men in the campaign for gender equality.

The UN Declaration and Platform for Action on gender equality was adopted by 189 countries, including Ireland, in Beijing in September 1995. It addresses 12 areas of concern for women globally, including education, work, health and reproductive rights, and violence against women,

The Beijing plan is due to be reviewed next month. Ireland will take part in that review process.

The President said all men should be feminist. Quoting Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mr Higgins said:

“We should all be feminists. A feminist is a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. A feminist is a man or woman who says, ‘Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it and we must do better’.”

Mr Higgins said the suppression of the realisation by women of their full potential - whether in education or employment, whether due to violence or sexist thinking - was bad, not only for women, but for men and the whole of society too.

Current economic analyses of society too often reinforce the oppression of women, as they treat women as “invisible”. Mr Higgins said these views must be challenged.

‘Expression of solidarity’

Mr Higgins said: “As an expression of solidarity and in a spirit of a commitment to women’s rights, I am pleased to tell you that I have accepted the invitation of UN Under-Secretary General and executive director of UN Women, [Phumzile] Mlambo-Ngcuka, to become one of the group of ten champion world leaders for the UN HeforShe campaign.”

Mr Higgins described the HeforShe campaign as a “solidarity movement for gender equality that brings together one half of humanity in support of the other half . . . a global effort that aims to engage men and boys in removing the social and cultural barriers that prevent the other half of humanity from achieving their potential.”

Mr Higgins said we had reached a point where all issues affecting the rights of women were open for discussion: “There is much to be done to achieve real equality and there are so many areas where real respect for the rights of women remains an aspiration rather than a reality.

“The realisation of those rights is one of the great ethical challenges of our age - for women and for men who share an ethical commitment to equality and universal respect for rights.”

The conference in Dublin Castle is hosted by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and by the National Women’s Council of Ireland.