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AIDS-Free World, pleased to hear back from the Office of the
Secretary-General, continues the open dialogue about the new UN women's
agency. We ask the Deputy Secretary-General about deadlines and roadmaps, and
refer her to the original position paper explaining the need for a women's
agency.
October 23, 2009
Her Excellency Ms. Asha-Rose Migiro
Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations
3 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
Ms. Deputy Secretary-General:
Thank you very much for your 13 October reply* to our letter expressing both
our delight and our concerns about the new UN women’s agency. You kindly
indicated that you look forward to continuing our discussion on this issue.
In that spirit, and understanding the tight deadline to which you are
committed, we would like to respond.
We appreciated your reassurance that the Secretariat will act expeditiously
on the resolution on system-wide coherence, which calls for a detailed
proposal on the new women’s agency. We understand that during the briefing
that took place on October 12th on the advancement of women, Third Committee
members were assured that the General Assembly could expect a proposal by the
end of the year. May we inquire about the intervening timeline for this
process?
The General Assembly resolution that approved the creation of the new agency
also addresses the selection of the Under Secretary-General. When does this
process begin? Of what will it consist?
We are relieved to hear that you are planning civil society consultations and
dialogue, giving the world’s women their due in terms of fashioning the
agency. As part of civil society, we are very interested in knowing when
these consultations will take place, how they will be structured, and how you
will select the participants. We assume that the process will soon be
underway.
Civil society is crucial, but the UN itself has a critical role in this
historic development. We have spoken to UN Country Team leaders who, despite
their direct knowledge of the gaps in gender programming at country level,
know only sketchy details about the resolution and its implications for their
work. We have also been met with puzzlement and curiosity when we have
mentioned the new agency to other UN staff. Something is very wrong if a
small NGO has more knowledge of a significant change at the UN than the UN’s
own staff. The Secretariat must show its leadership and galvanize and inform
people within and beyond the UN, using the vast public relations resources at
its disposal including the Department of Public Information and UN offices
around the world.
We remain utterly convinced that merely amalgamating the existing gender
entities into a new composite would be ineffective and self-defeating.
The UN needs a new institution on a par with other funds and programs,
with sufficient expert staff and resources to work extensively on the ground.
There is no utopian land where a women’s agency would be irrelevant. And the
UN bears part of the blame for this reality. You have spoken frankly about
this; allow us to remind you of your own words: “There is little disagreement
that the gender architecture is fragmented. It is also inadequately funded
and insufficiently focused on country-driven demands. There are gaps between
policies and implementation. Authority is weak. Accountability is lacking.
There is no single recognized driver to direct UN activities.”
We could not agree more with your assertion that Member States must provide
adequate funding. Our deep concern is that Member States have not yet been
given an educated estimate about how much funding is adequate.
When it was time to set up mechanisms for other global goals, such as
alleviating poverty or defending children’s rights, the UN always costed out
the plans. This has not happened for women. The Member States need a sense of
what the agency is charged with, and what it will cost. Member States
need your leadership and the Secretary-General’s to foster governments’
understanding of the necessary costs of fixing the broken system and ending
all forms of discrimination against women. They will look to you for guidance
on costing, and now is the moment for you to provide it.
We see that every day brings more incoherence to the UN’s work on gender. The
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a good example. The
Secretary-General already has a Special Representative for the DRC—where the
most destructive war on women that the world has ever seen still rages—and,
in addition, a Special Representative on Sexual Violence with a mandate
to work globally. On top of that, the Security Council recently passed
Resolution 1888, which calls on the Secretary-General to appoint a special
representative to "provide coherent and strategic leadership to...
address, at both headquarters and country level, sexual violence in armed
conflict." Meanwhile, sexual violence in and out of conflict
flourishes despite the proliferation of Special Representatives. The
commitment at the highest levels of the UN to address sexual violence in
conflict settings is admirable, but until we have a women’s agency with a
clear mandate coupled with full operational capacity on the ground, these
commitments and representatives will remain meaningless to the women of the
DRC and those in similar conflicts around the world.
We must also address another critical issue: just two weeks ago, the UNAIDS
Second Independent Evaluation Oversight Committee delivered the “Second
Independent Evaluation of UNAIDS”, covering the seven years from 2002 to
2008. You probably have not had an opportunity to read the section of the
document on gender. It is a scathing indictment of UNAIDS and its
co-sponsoring agencies, summarizing a record of failure on women’s issues.
Please do not repeat the mistakes of the past with the new women’s agency. We
have heard talk of using UNAIDS as a model both at secretariat and country
level. But given the signal failure of both the leadership and the governing
board in terms of women, coupled with the inability to act on the ground, we
think that UNAIDS is a model to avoid, rather than to emulate.
It is noteworthy that the first formal analysis of the need for a women’s
agency, written by Paula Donovan, came out in July of 2006. It is titled
“Gender Equality Now or Never: a New UN Agency for Women.” It warns
against UNAIDS as a model because of the deficiencies in that structure: a
secretariat with neither over-riding authority nor significant operational
capacity at country level.
Last month one of the world’s most respected medical journals, The Lancet,
wrote an editorial about the three-year-old paper, noting: “It calls for a
fully-fledged organisation, with on-the-ground presence in every country, a
guaranteed budget of US$1 billion to start, a full complement of expert
staff, and targeted programmes to achieve gender equality, empower women, and
support gender mainstreaming in governments and the UN. If the new UN agency
takes a form along these lines, it could represent a substantial step towards
improving the lives of women worldwide. If not, it will just be paying lip
service.”
That is a remarkable endorsement. We have attached a copy of this paper. It
can also be found on our website at http://www.aids-freeworld.org/content/view/100/105/.
While the figures in it date from 2006, the analysis is so clear and
compelling that the original High-Level Panel embraced its recommendation for
a new women’s agency and now The Lancet adds its imprimatur of
legitimacy. We think the paper can be of great help in producing the
necessary roadmap.
Again, thank you for your thoughtful reply. We are deliberately sending this
as an open letter to encourage an absolutely transparent process that informs
the UN and the world about this potentially momentous development, and to
encourage a public discussion. We will be posting this letter on our website
and hope you will respond in kind. We look forward to answers to our
questions, and to an exciting few weeks ahead as both the proposal and the
Under Secretary-General selection process take shape.
Sincerely,
Paula
Donovan
Stephen Lewis
Co-Director, AIDS-Free World Co-Director, AIDS-Free World
cc: Permanent Representatives of the United Nations
*The Deputy-Secretary General’s October 13 letter can be found at
http://www.aids-freeworld.org/content/view/287/195/
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