GLOBAL progress on women's rights is 'vanishing before our eyes,' UN boss Antonio Guterres warned Monday (Tuesday in Manila), saying the increasingly distant goal of gender equality will take another three centuries to achieve.

'Gender equality is growing more distant. On the current track, UN Women puts it 300 years away,' the United Nations secretary-general said in a General Assembly speech ahead of International Women's Day on March 8, as he launched two weeks of discussions led by the Commission on the Status of Women.