The United Nations has joined the rest of the international community in observing International Women's Day by calling on countries to invest more in women and girls, warning that failing to do so will undermine efforts to achieve the Global Development Targets, a report from the Global 2 Local Network through Gamcotrap reveals.

According to the report, Banki Moon, the UN Secretary General in his message drew attention to ''serious'' gap between policy and practice in many countries on gender equality, as reflected in the lack of resource, insufficient budgetary allocations among others.

This failure of funding according to the UN Scretary General, undermines not only the endeavours for gender equality and women's empowerment as such but also retard efforts to reach all the Millenium Development Goals, refering to the global pledges to slash poverty and social ills by 2015.

'' As we know from long and indisputable experience, investing in women and girls has a multiplier effect on productivity and sustained economic growth.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Fund for Population Affairs (UNFPA), agreed that " if we want to achieve the Millenium  Development Goals, we need more investments in women and girls. Whether we are looking at it from a human rights, political or economic point of view, the conclusion is the same. WE need to invest in women. The returns are high for women themselves and for the world at large'' she said.

He added; "Improving women's well-being cannot be accomplished without improving their health, particularly their reproductive health and by ensuring universal access to reproductive health, will be possible to reduce poverty, the spread of HIV/AIDS and meet the need for family planning".

Madam Obaid added that investing in women's reproductive health and well-being, countries can stand a better chance of achieving the MDGs and making gender equality a reality.

On the violence against women and girls, she said the UN has also come to assisst countries in efforts to generate the data needed and measure the extent of the violence against women and girls.

"Together with proven evidence of what works and the financial technical resources needed to support countries to meet the implementation challenges, there may indeed be an end of violence against women and girls and genuine achievement on gender equality and women's empowerment can be realise,'' she said.

The report then named the countries that also observed the day citing the Sudanese region of Darfur, where staff of the AU-UN mission delivered T-shirts to women in EL Fasher market, while hundreds of women in the Southern Afghan city of Kandahar march for peace.