ISA side event at the 2024 Ocean Decade Conference | Empowering women for the ocean decade: achieving gender equality in ocean sciences and policymaking

12 Apr 2024 - 12 Apr 2024

• In partnership with the World Maritime University, Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute and the International Hydrographic Organization, ISA is co-organizing the satellite event “Empowering women for the ocean decade: achieving gender equality in ocean sciences and policymaking.”
• The event will take place on Friday, 12 April, from 13:15 to 14:45 in the meeting room Arctic Ocean MR 120-121 Level P1 of the International Barcelona Convention Centre.
• This is an in-person side event and pre-registration is not necessary.

Context

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a key responsibility of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is to promote and encourage the conduct of marine scientific research as well as to build the capacity of developing States to enable their effective participation in the activities carried out in the international seabed area. At a programmatic level, this is operationalized through the Capacity development strategy of the International Seabed Authority, endorsed in 2021, and the Action plan of the International Seabed Authority in support of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, adopted by all ISA Members in 2020 in support of the United Nations Decade. Women’s empowerment is cross-cutting in the implementation of the ISA mandates and the realization of all the United Nations Decade challenges.

ISA has been a frontrunner in its commitment to opening new opportunities for women in deep-sea-related disciplines through the enhancement of their role and participation in deep-sea scientific research and ocean governance (#OceanAction15467). This includes the Women in Deep-sea Research project that recently launched the first-ever global mentoring programme “See Her Exceed” (S.H.E) for women scientists from developing States. This event will demonstrate the progress of dedicated capacity-building and development initiatives designed to identify and overcome key challenges in promoting women.

Objectives

• The key objectives are to showcase ISA’s strategic and programmatic commitments to women empowerment in deep-sea science and technology capacity development across different initiatives: the Contractors’ Training Programme, the i-CAN alum networking and the global mentoring programme. The event will showcase challenges and critical barriers that women scientists active in deep-sea-related fields still face while stimulating concrete collaborative actions to overcome them. The testimonials from junior and mid-career women researchers benefiting from ISA training opportunities and one of our programme officers involved in the implementation of ISA women empowerment projects will also be presented.