Gender Equality in UN Reform

The Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on System-Wide Coherence in the areas of development, humanitarian assistance, and the environment released its report, "Delivering as One," on 9 November 2006. UNIFEM welcomes the Panel's recommendation for stronger and more coherent UN delivery on gender equality. The Panel, which was co-chaired by Prime Ministers Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, Luísa Dias Diogo of Mozambique, and Jens Stoltenberg of Norway, was established following the 2005 World Summit which gave momentum to a number of initiatives for United Nations reform.

Some key recommendations in the report related to gender equality include:

Consolidate three of the UN's existing gender institutions — Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women (OSAGI), Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), and UNIFEM — into one gender entity.
The gender entity will be entrusted with a dual mandate combining normative, analytical and monitoring functions and policy advisory and targeted programming functions.
The Executive Director of the gender entity should have the rank of Under-Secretary-General, consistent with heads of other agencies.
The gender entity must be fully and ambitiously funded.
The commitment to gender equality is and should remain the mandate of the entire UN system.

The report will be deliberated informally by member states during the remainder of this year and taken up by the General Assembly for deliberations and negotiations in 2007.

For more information, see: