Distinguished leaders, Her Majesty Queen Máxima, Ms.Ivanka Trump, Advisor to the President of the United States, distinguished Representatives of international organizations and groups, ladies and gentlemen,
 
It is a great pleasure to have all of you today for the sake of women’s empowerment, one of our important policy agenda. I would like to reiterate my appreciation to the international organizations and groups for their various contributions to the G20.
 
As the G20 Presidency, Japan has been working to advance discussions on women’s empowerment. Thanks to your cooperation, I am pleased that I can announce three priority areas and advancement highlighted under Japan’s Presidency.
 
Firstly, with regard to women’s labor participation, toward achieving “25 by 25” target, we will establish follow up a system where G20 members’ implementation status reviewed at the leaders’ level. I am pleased that Japan has been making a good progress on that.
 
Secondly, with regard to support for girls’ education, we will work toward a world where all the girls can access quality education for at least 12 years. This is what I promised with Ms. Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Japan will provide quality education and training for at least 4 million girls and women in developing countries for over the three years by 2020 and thereby work toward realizing safe and secure learning environment.
 
Thirdly, it is important to continue support for women entrepreneurs and reflect the voices of women business leaders in the efforts of private sector and the discussions of G20. We welcome steady implementation of Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) launched under the presidency of Chancellor Merkel with the collaboration of Advisor Trump. We will also support the launching of EMPOWER, self-sustaining network among women business leaders, with Prime Minister Trudeau, proponent of this project, and other G20 countries.
 
Furthermore, we welcome that the UNSGSA, Queen Máxima, will provide support for W20 on its activities.
 
The G20 members at different development stages make a united effort to promote women’s empowerment. I believe that such effort will serve as a driving force for further development of the G20 as a whole.
 
Japan will host the World Assembly for Women next year on April 3 and 4. We welcome your participation. Let’s continue our effort. Thank you very much.