It has taken the 192 member states of the United Nations a little while (what, four years?) to come to a decision on how to best promote gender equality within the international institution. The result, agreed upon by General Assembly in a resolution beginning of July, is a newly formed agency within the UN, the UN Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women.
Now, ordinarily, one would refer to this UN unit henceforth under its acronym. Unfortunately, “UNEGEEW” doesn’t exactly role from the tongue. Nor does it ring with positive connotations — in US English, “eew” is an utterance of distaste and disgust. So, with tongue-in-cheek and decidedly unimaginative, the entity will be known in the future as “UN Women” or “ONU Femmes” in French. One can only hope that this nomen turns out to be a good omen, even as it downplays the gender dimension of its work… At least, the new structure provides some clarity and with the expected appointment of the head of the new UN Women agency at the rank of an Under-Secretary-General, directly reporting to the Secretary General and included in all senior-level management circles some much needed authority boost for gender equality issues at the United Nations.
The new entity, which will be operational by January 2011, will consolidate the four existing UN gender entities, namely the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW); the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW); the Office of the Special Adviser for Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI); and the United Nations Development Fund for Women(UNIFEM) – into one. Hopefully, it can do better than its four parents, who have struggled valiantly, despite being understaffed and under-financed, to mainstream gender equality in all aspects of the UN system’s work, albeit with mixed results. One entity, thus one voice, is supposed to finally ensure stronger coherence and coordination at all levels and to bring together resources and mandates for greater impact.
UN Women’s mandate will include supporting inter-governmental bodies in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms, and helping Member States to implement these standards, including by providing suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it. It will also act as a watch-dog by monitoring the system-wide progress of the UN to realize its own commitments to gender equality.
“UN Women is a recognition of a simple truth: Equality for women and girls is not only a basic human right, it is a social and economic imperative…”, promised UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in a statement. Let’s pray that he is willing to use his own statute and office to ensure that UN Women thrives.
A key to the effectiveness of the new agency will be its power to interact with all the specialized UN agencies — and not just the few select that most (even within the UN) have come to associate with women’s empowerment and gender equality, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
What about the UN agencies for climate change (UNFCCC), trade and development (UNCTAD) or industrial development (UNIDO), none of which up to now has shown much gender awareness, let alone the institutional drive to promote gender equality within its own issue mandate? At the UNFCCC, gender equality is thus far not enshrined in the convention, nor does the UNFCCC Secretariat have a formal Gender Action Plan or even an internal gender policy and this despite the fact that the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change have been amply documented by various UN agencies such as UNDP or UNFPA and recognized even by the venerable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Thus, getting gender into UN entities such as the UNFCC will be the litmus test for UN Women’s prowess. Only when the UNFCCC, UNCTAD, or the UNIDO are willing to accept UN Women as an equal and important resource and technical advisor; only when they recognize the UN system’s commitment to gender equality not just as a distant possibility, but a mandatory performance requirement – monitored by a UN Women with enforcement teeth within the UN system — will a new single gender equality entity be succesful where four predecessor agencies could not be.
There is another not so small matter: resources. UN member states estimate that UN Women will need some US$ 500 million to do its work right – twice as much as has been made available to its predecessor entities combined. So, the new entity will have to pass its hat around for strictly voluntary contributions by member states at a time of tight domestic budgets and ever growing national budget deficits, in order to begin its work in earnest.
I do wish UN Women all the best for this first, maybe its most existential test….
Photo: Delusion Productions with Creative Commons License
Tags: development, gender, UN, UNFCCC, women
