A coalition of more than 140 international NGOs and women’s groups is gratified that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expressing public support for the creation of a new UN agency for women.
“We believe the public support of the secretary general is a very important step in moving closer towards the implementation of this new women’s entity,” said June Zeitlin, executive director of the New York-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation.
She said the secretary general last week called on member states to take up this proposal, as did women from around the world who were in New York for the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which concluded a two-week session on Friday.
The proposal for a new UN women’s agency was made last November by a 15-member “High-Level Panel on UN System-Wide Coherence”, comprising heads of government, former world political leaders and senior government and UN officials.
On International Women’s Day, which was commemorated at the UN and around the globe last Thursday, the secretary general said such a new body should be able to call on all of the UN system’s resources in the work to empower women and realise gender equality worldwide.
“I encourage member states to study the possibility of replacing several current structures with one dynamic UN entity,” he said.
The proposal for the creation of a new gender architecture includes the consolidation of three existing UN entities — the UN Development Fund for Women, the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the UN Division for the Advancement of Women — under a single new UN agency to be headed by an under-secretary general, the third-highest-ranking post in the world body.
But its implementation will require the blessings of the 192-member General Assembly, which has not given any indication of how it will respond.
‘No opposition’
Asked if she was confident that member states would support the proposal, Zeitlin said that women who spoke to their government representatives at the UN last week will continue these discussions back home in their nations’ capitals.
“To date, we have heard of no opposition by member states to strengthening the gender-equality architecture,” she added. “However, we do understand that countries have questions and want more information on a number of issues, including about how the new entity will operate, particularly at the national level, and where the new resources will come from.”
In a letter to the secretary general last week, the coalition of more than 140 NGOs said: “We call upon UN member states and the secretary general to take swift actions to initiate and support efforts to strengthen the architecture for women’s equality in the General Assembly deliberations during its [current] 61st session,” which ends in early September.
The coalition says the upgrading of women’s equality work within the UN system is long overdue. “It is imperative at this critical juncture that member states and the UN system take bold action — and provide the leadership and resources required — to make these recommendations a reality.”
The 140 NGOs, spanning all of the continents, include Asia Pacific Women’s Watch, the Canadian Federation of University Women, the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, the European Women’s Lobby, the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies, the International Federation of Women’s Lawyers and the World Federation of UN Associations.
Charlotte Bunch of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership said the letter signed by all of the NGOs was delivered to the secretary general on International Women’s Day. “It is our hope that this will get the process moving again among governments,” she said.
Bunch pointed out that the coalition was also successful in getting the issue discussed at the General Assembly’s special thematic session on gender last week, and with governments around the CSW session.
“While we do not know exactly what will be the next stage in the process, the idea is gaining momentum and has been widely supported by NGOs at the CSW,” she added.
Commitments
The letter sent to the secretary general also calls for a commitment “to significant and sustained funding of the new women’s entity and the gender equality and women’s rights/empowerment work of the whole UN system, including gender mainstreaming within all UN policies and programmes”.
The coalition also seeks “meaningful and ongoing civil-society participation, particularly of women’s groups, in the consideration and implementation of the [high-level] panel’s recommendations at the national, regional and global levels”.
The letter says that structures and avenues for such participation should be built into the gender equality architecture of the UN at all levels to ensure that women’s voices, and especially those at the grassroots, are heard and that women’s concerns are effectively addressed in sustained ways.
Zeitlin said the three existing women’s units have a total budget of about $65-million, compared with $450-million for the UN Population Fund and about $2-billion for the UN Children’s Fund.
“These recommendations present the best opportunity to reduce the gap between the rhetoric on gender equality at the United Nations and the reality of women’s lives,” she added.
She also pointed out that the panel had recommended an initial target of about $200-million for the proposed new women’s agency. “We understand this number was taken out [of the panel’s report] because some panel members believed it was far below what was needed for the United Nations to deliver on gender equality and women’s empowerment.” — IPS