The United Nations “Every Woman Every Child” (EWEC) High Level Advisory Group (HLAG) meeting was held on Sept. 20th in UN headquarters in New York. Guests presented included UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, HLAG Co-Chair H.E. Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria, President of the Republic of Chile, Alternate co-Chair H.E. Ms. Tarja Halonen, former President of the Republic of Finland and H.E. Mr. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania, as well as HLAG Members Ms. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Former Prime Minister of Denmark & CEO of Save the Children, Mr. Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF & Chair of the H6, Ministers from Canada, Norway, Senegal and UAE, Leadership from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other world renowned foundations, enterprises and international NGOs. President Li Xiaolin attended the meeting and delivered a speech as the only Chinese representative authorized by the Chinese Central Government.

President Li congratulated on the upgrading of HLAG into High Level Steering Group (HLSG) in next year. She said that CPAFFC would support EWEC as always by leveraging its rich resources in Chinese localities and international sister cities, to accelerate EWEC processing into local levels in China; meanwhile mobilizing more resources through nearly 500 NGOs which have established cooperative partnership with CPAFFC and the EWEC China Partnership Network to support the EWEC overseas projects. President Li also suggested that members of HLAG should enhance coordination and collaboration to make contribution to the Global Strategy and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Participants all spoke highly of President Li’s speech. The host of the meeting Mr. Kikwete complimented her speech to be “the support from a powerful organization”.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed his gratitude to all members of HLAG in his concluding remarks, for their long-term support to EWEC and the Global Strategy launched by him. He extended his wish that when he left the office, HLAG would keep on advocating all fields to support this cross-industry cross-field international partnership platform, to further the cause of improving the health of women, children and adolescents and implement the SDGs, with the aim of achieving the goal of ending all preventable deaths of women, children and adolescents in 2030.

HLAG was established in Jan. 2016, with members including Presidents and Prime Ministers, former high-ranking politicians, leaderships of NGOs, foundations and multinational enterprises. Participants at the meeting reached the consensus to upgrade HLAG into HLSG in 2017, and invite the new UN Secretary General to be the Senior Co-Chair of the Group. HLAG and HLSG will attract the engagement of all walks of life at the highest level to promote the development of EWEC and the Global Strategy. After the meeting, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the Global Financing Fund (GFF), with the goal of raising 33.3 billion dollars to fill in the capital gap for developing the health of women, children and adolescents.