WUNRN
U.N. Urged to Create Separate Agency
for Women
Thalif
Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 7 (IPS) - A
proposed blueprint for a radical restructuring of the United Nations as
envisaged by outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan has fallen short of its
target in one specific area: gender empowerment.
As the 191 member
states get ready to discuss the political nuances and economic implications of
Annan's recently-released landmark report on U.N. reform, there is an
increasingly vociferous demand to rectify the gender shortcoming by creating a
separate U.N. agency to deal with women's issues.
Currently, these
issues are dispersed among several U.N. bodies, including the U.N. Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the Division for the
Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues
(OSAGI) and the International Research and Training Institute for the
Advancement of Women (INSTRAW).
But none of them, with the exception of
UNFPA, are in the major league -- or equivalent to stand-alone, resource-rich
agencies such as the U.N. Development Programme, the U.N. children's agency
UNICEF or the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
A high-level panel of
experts on "U.N. System-Wide Coherence in the fields of Development,
Humanitarian Assistance, and the Environment", currently in session, has been
asked how gender equality "can be better and more fully addressed in the work of
the United Nations".
In a letter to the Panel Friday, a coalition of
U.S.-based women's groups said: "To date, what is clear from the various reviews
since the 1995 Fourth World Conference in Beijing is that the United Nations and
national governments are failing in this task" --specifically "on the
commitments repeatedly made for gender equality and women's empowerment".
The coalition -- consisting of the Centre for Women's Global Leadership,
the Women's Environment and Development Organisation and the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom -- says that "experience indicates
that women's equality and human rights cannot be achieved without a powerful and
well-resourced entity within the United Nations, specifically mandated to
achieve these goals."
"And yet, despite repeated statements on the
importance of gender equality, women's machineries within the United Nations
remain under-resourced and marginalised from the main activities and policies of
development, humanitarian affairs and environment, as well as from human rights
and peacekeeping, at the operational and policy levels," the letter said.
Although the coalition is not endorsing any specific proposal, it refers
to several that are currently on the table: incorporating UNIFEM into the U.N.
Development Programme; or combining UNIFEM, DAW, OSAGI and INSTRAW, and creating
a new women's agency with a broad mandate on gender equality (building on UNFPA
and UNIFEM), with substantial resources at the global and country levels.
"The same commitments to innovation and effectiveness by member states
on other issues should be brought to the discussion of gender equality and
women's human rights," the letter argues.
"Women's empowerment and
gender issues need to be represented more powerfully at the table at the U.N.
headquarters, and in the U.N. country teams and complex peacekeeping
operations," it added.
Jessica Neuwirth, president of the New York-based
Equality Now, says that UNIFEM "should certainly be upgraded into a full-fledged
agency".
"The real question is why it hasn't been sooner, especially as
there has been so much public recognition of the central role of women in
development," she told IPS.
Neuwirth also said that the
secretary-general himself noted the central role of women in development yet
again in his presentation on International Women's Day last month.
"The
problem is that we have repeated acknowledgement of the overarching importance
of women and yet in reality women are treated as second-class citizens," she
noted.
Or in this case, UNIFEM has been given a lesser status for no
apparent reason, which greatly limits its capacity when one would expect from
all the rhetoric that there would be a natural interest in enhancing its
capacity, Neuwirth added.
Stephen Lewis, U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS
in Africa and a strong advocate of gender empowerment, said last month that what
is needed is an international women's agency, within the United Nations, to
advocate for women the way UNICEF does for children..
"It's as simple
and straightforward as that," said Lewis, a former UNICEF deputy executive
director.
He said that to talk of U.N. reform and human rights for
women, in the same breath, under present circumstances is laughable.
"The question then becomes, how do we move in the right direction? Let
me speak openly: at the moment, in multilateral terms, the United Nations is
hopelessly fragmented in its dealings with women's issues and women's human
rights."
The vehicle that would seem, on the surface, to best embody the
hopes and needs of women is UNIFEM, he said.
"But it's not even an
agency; it's a mere department of the UNDP, and it has a budget so modest and a
staff so small as to belie any possibility of an agency on a grand scale. I
don't belittle UNIFEM: it does its best, but its best is shackled by a lethal
combination of parsimony and misogyny within the international system," Lewis
added.
"If we are to have a separate women's agency, with financing of
at least a billion dollars a year (in order even to approximate the wealth and
clout of other U.N. agencies), and several thousand staff (UNICEF has more than
8,000), then we have to start afresh," he said.
In a letter to Annan on
International Women's Day, a coalition of international women's groups said: "We
are disappointed and frankly outraged that gender equality and strengthening the
women's machineries within the U.N. system are barely noted, and are not
addressed as a central part of the (U.N.) reform agenda."
Neuwirth of
Equality Now is equally outraged. She told IPS that her organisation is
continually disappointed by the failure of the United Nations in the face of so
many opportunities to improve the dismal statistics of women's representation at
the highest levels of decision-making.
"There is no indication that any
women were considered to fill the role of deputy secretary-general, and in his
recently released short list for the recruitment of the executive director of
the U.N. Environment Programme, the secretary-general did not include a single
woman," she noted.
Last week, Mark Malloch Brown of Britain succeeded
Louise Frechette of Canada as the new deputy secretary-general, second in
command to Annan.
"This is why the statistics are what they are and why
we are not any closer to the 50/50 goal of gender balance by 2000. It is because
when openings arise at the highest level, too often men are appointed without
any search for, or even due consideration of, qualified women for the vacancy,"
Neuwirth said.
Equality Now is calling on the Security Council to seek
out a qualified woman to serve as the next secretary-general. Annan completes
his second five-year-term at the end of December.
"This is a key
opportunity for the United Nations to demonstrate some commitment to
implementing the long overdue goals that have been established," she added.
(END/2006)
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