Dhangadhi, Apr. 22: Minister of State for Women, Children and Social Welfare Mrs. Kamala Pant inaugurated the regional consultative meeting on “Beijing+5” here on Thursday.

The one-day regional consultative meeting has been organised in connection with the preparations being made for the national report which Nepal is to present sat the special session of the United Nations General Assembly in June.

The United Nations has called for the special session of the General Assembly to review the activities undertaken since the fourth world women conference  held in Beijing some years back.

Altogether 19 persons, including political workers, women leaders, women development officers, office-bearers of women groups, representatives of development related offices in various districts of the far-west region and journalists and representatives of social institutions and organisations took part in the consultative meeting.

On the occasion, Minister of State Panta said that the socio-economic progress of the lot of the Nepalese women and their greater participation in the political process depended on the success of the “women awareness and income-generating programme” introduced by His Majesty’s Government.

In the second session of the day-long conference organised by the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, coordinator of the report preparation committee Dr. Balgopal Baidya shed light on the details of the report preparation process and resource persons Prativa Subedi, Subarnaraj Joshi, Sewa Adhikari and Shova Gautam on the 12 various issues concerned with women ratified by the Beijing conference.

At the meeting participants held panel discussions on the 12 issues of concern and identified regional level problems and made suggestions in this regard.