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Oxfam and VSO UK Country Level Survey on UN Women: Final Report

At CSW 55, Oxfam and VSO UK launched the outcomes of our global civil society survey on women’s needs, priorities and expectations on UN Women at country level.

The views of 100 civil society organizations, including grassroots and women’s rights organizations, from 75 countries on the priorities for UNW and its approach to working at country level are now made available in a report.

The report, called A Blueprint for UN Women, can be downloaded via:

http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/blueprint-un-women_final-survey-report__feb2011__2.pdf

See also the joint VSO/Oxfam press release:

http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2011-02-24/violence-against-women-must-be-top-priority-un-women

Background to this project

In September 2010, Oxfam and VSO UK (with support of the UK GAD network) commissioned a global civil society survey on UN Women. The goal of this project was to identify what women want from UN Women at country level by interviewing a diverse range of women’s rights advocates and their organizations. The survey should capture the needs, aspirations and concerns of women’s rights advocates and their organizations at country-level regarding the future operations of UN Women.

As UN Women proceeds at country level, the challenge is to ensure the operational capacity of UN Women and its expansion built on the needs of women and girls at country level. The operational capacity of UN Women should present a change over the way the UN’s development system currently works for women and girls.

We received an overwhelming response to our call for expressions of interest- more than 1000 organizations signed-up to be interviewed. Between October and November 2010, MDF a development consultancy based in the Netherlands interviewed 100 CSOs from grassroots and country level, from 75 non-OECD countries.

Survey results and recommendations

Our survey marks the first time that civil society, including women’s rights and grassroots organizations at country level have been surveyed on how UN Women should proceed to make most impact at country level. In order to be effective at country level, UN Women should build its work around these priorities:

- The top priority that UN Women must address is all forms of Violence against Women (VAW). 98% of survey respondents said urgent action is needed on this issue and 72% selected it as the number 1 issue for UN Women to tackle.

- UN Women should focus on the empowerment of rural women as they are least aware of their rights and have fewest resources and access to services.

- UN Women should adopt a different approach to working at country level to that of UN agencies in the past. Its approach should be transformative, leading to actual change.

- A central element of UN Women’s strategy should be the collaboration with and inclusion of CSOs as genuine partners at country level. Civil society wants UN Women to support their efforts to empower women, strengthen their rights and ensure they play a role in the development of their countries.

- UN Women needs to examine its relationship with governments at country level and use its access to government to open up spaces for CSOs to participate in the political processes of their countries.