Context

• India has announced a global alliance for global welfare and gender equality at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Key Points

• Its primary and stated objective is to attract the world's best practice, knowledge and investment in the areas of women's health, education and enterprise.
• This alliance will build on the commitments of G-20 leaders to achieve greater benefits at the international level. These will include commitments from various groups like Business-20, Women-20.
• The idea of this alliance is to promote a women-led development model in line with the declaration of G20 leaders.
• Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Hardeep Singh Puri and World Economic Forum President Klaus Schwab were present in the meeting.
• The alliance is supported by industry leaders such as Mastercard, Uber, Tata, TVS, Bayer, Godrej, Serum Institute of India, IMD Lausanne and over 10,000 industry partners through CII.
• Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the alliance will be organised and led by the CII Center for Women's Leadership.
• The World Economic Forum has joined as a ‘Network Partner’ and Invest India as an ‘Institutional Partner’.

Helpful in achieving SDG goals

• This initiative is an important step towards achieving multiple SDGs including SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-Being, 4 – Quality Education, 5 – Gender Equality and Empowerment, 17 – Global Partnership for Development and more, which are based on gender equality and equity.
• It also Underlines India's commitment towards SDG goals. 

IMPORTANT FACTS FOR EXAM

World Economic Forum (WEF)

• It is a Swiss non-profit organisation.
• Established: 1971 in Geneva (Switzerland)
• It is recognized by the Swiss government as an international organisation for public-private cooperation.
• Mission:WEF is committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other representatives of society to shape global, regional and industry projects.
• Founder and Executive Chairman: Klaus Schwab