‘No Woman Is Safe Until Every Woman Is Safe’: Sri Lanka PM Calls for Zero Tolerance on Gender-Based Violence

COLOMBO (News 1st); Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya placed the safety of women and girls at the heart of her address to the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women 2025 at the China National Convention Center, declaring “No woman is safe until every single woman is safe.”

She urged governments to adopt zero tolerance for gender-based violence, embed gender-sensitive policies and budgets, and ensure that equality becomes “a living reality.”

Welcomed at the venue by President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan, Dr. Amarasuriya framed women’s safety as inseparable from a broader agenda of rights, opportunity, and dignity.

The Prime Minister called for all-round development—simultaneous advances in education, health, the economy, politics, society, and culture—arguing that only a comprehensive approach can remove the systemic barriers mapped out in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

Addressing the summit theme, she urged leaders to close the digital divide so women and girls become creators and leaders in innovation, not just users of technology, and to recognise and reduce unpaid care work through shared responsibility and supportive public services.

While acknowledging gains, Dr. Amarasuriya warned that significant gaps persist, from women’s under representation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and political leadership to stubborn shortfalls in economic security and food access. She invoked the global consensus that no country has yet fully achieved gender equality, calling for renewed resolve to meet commitments “left slow and uneven” under the 12 critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action.

Invoking Sri Lanka’s pioneering history—electing the world’s first female Prime Minister in 1960—Dr. Amarasuriya highlighted expanded representation in the new Parliament, with 22 women from diverse, including working class and marginalised, communities. The current administration includes two women Cabinet Ministers, including herself, and a woman Deputy Minister. She pledged structural and social reforms to increase women’s political participation and ensure representation “in leadership and decision making at every level, across every field.”

Dr. Amarasuriya cautioned against a growing global pushback against gender equality and human rights, citing a widening gender divide and the spread of illiberal narratives. She welcomed initiatives announced by the Chinese leadership, calling them “a sign of real progressive and liberal thinking,” and said Sri Lanka stands ready to support global efforts that keep women and girls at the centre.

Dr. Amarasuriya urged leaders to fund gender responsive budgets, deliver climate action that is deeply gender sensitive, and build economies of opportunity for all. “Together,” she said, “we can create a future that is more just, inclusive and sustainable—a future where equality is not an aspiration but a living reality.”