International Women’s Day Message by UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on International Women's Day, 8 March 2017 Date: 8 February 2017 Across the world, too many women and girls spend too many hours on household responsibilities—typically more than double the time spent by men and boys. They look after younger siblings, older family members, deal with illness in the family and manage the house. In many cases this unequal division of labour is at the expense of women’s and girls’ learning, of paid work, sports, or engagement in civic or community leadership. This shapes the norms of relative disadvantage and advantage, of where women and men are positioned in the economy, of what they are skilled to do and where they will work. This is the unchanging world of unrewarded work, a globally familiar scene of withered futures, where girls and their mothers sustain the family with free labour, with lives whose trajectories are very different from the men of the household.

The European Union and Palestinian Ministry of Social Development (MoSD) launched a new 1.5 million capacity building programme for the improvement of social protection systems in Palestine. The launching of the support also marks the International Day of Eradication of Poverty which acknowledges the right of all people to fully exercise their human rights. This day was designated by the United Nation General Assembly and is observed worldwide.