Review meeting for the United Nations Joint Programme to Protect and Promote the Human Rights of Women and Girls (UNJP) 2006 was held in Istanbul.
 The United Nations Joint Programme to Protect and Promote the Human Rights of Women and Girls (UNJP) 2006 was held at the Sabancı Center in Istanbul on 5 December 2006.
Abdülkadir Aksu, the Minister of Interior, was the keynote speaker of the meeting, and indicated that the issue of women's rights was the name of a struggle running in parallel with adopting democracy as the way of life and noted that "Achieving gender equality is a sine qua non of social justice. Our government is well aware of this fact, and has adopted as its primary goal that our women must be brought up to such level that they could assume all social responsibilities in any field. We know very well that our women and girls who make up the half of our population well deserve the progress in other countries and we are doing our best to support their rising to the living standards in developed countries and their participation in decision making mechanisms."The Minister of Interior Aksu added that the Joint Programme implemented in 6 provinces was an exemplary practice.Güler Sabancı, the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Hacı Ömer Sabancı Foundation (VAKSA), stated that the issue of women and girls is an issue of human rights and as such it involves all sectors of the society in the broadest sense.
Sabancı noted that VAKSA realized many projects in education, health, social and cultural fields for the social development in Turkey, and made significant investments particularly in education that would alleviate the burden on the public administration.Sabancı said "Considering the facts of today's world and our country, we believe that multi-dimensional and multi-lateral projects must be recognised. Therefore, our Foundation sees this programme as one which would make a impact on lives of masses, and that we the Foundation are proud to be involved with the programme."
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative ai Dr. Tunga Tüzer indicated that problems in practice "prevented women and girls enjoying their legally protected rights," that women's participation in the labor force was still about one fourth, that women doing the same work as men did still earn a little more than one third earned by men, also that one in three women suffered physical or sexual violence at least once in their lives. Tüzer noted that this programme was designed to create models to protect and promote human rights of women and girls, and aimed to create local solutions to problems identified by the citizens of 6 cities, and furthermore create women friendly cities.
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