Update on the UN Women’s Agency
By Campaigns | May 12, 2010
Eight months after the United Nations General Assembly resolved to create a new UN agency for women, the new entity is yet to be established. The idea behind the new agency was to unite the current gender-related departments in one agency under one under-secretary, and so create an entity with a stronger voice and operational capacity similar to UNICEF. Currently four different small agencies with inadequate funding, low country presence and varying and sometimes overlapping mandates are dealing with gender issues, making coherent and effective action on gender-related issues in the world and within the UN system very difficult.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon promised to prioritise women’s empowerment this year, but rumours about the imminent appointment of an under-secretary to head the new women’s agency are yet to be realised. The creation of the new agency is part of a wider reform process in the UN system, which includes economic development, humanitarian aid, gender empowerment and the environment. Unfortunately the proposal for a women’s agency, passed in September 2009 is worryingly vague on what the new agency will look like. Advocates for a women’s agency consistently called for it to be agreed outside the wider structural reform process the UN is undergoing, but unfortunately it has now become a pawn in the political disputes on wider reforms. The G77, the Non-Aligned Movement, China, Russia and Japan are currently blocking moves to progress the agency, arguing for a holistic approach to reform and demanding progress on other issues first.
In April a draft resolution was developed that, once passed by the General Assembly, could finally make the new UN women’s agency a reality. Member states started discussing the contents of the draft on 30 April and discussions are ongoing. The aim is to find an agreement on the texts by member states by the beginning of July, so that the agency could be launched at the end of the current session in September and in time for the summit on the Millennium Development Goals. However, at the current pace of negotiations and with no official launch date set yet, this seems highly unlikely. Delegates at the recent UN Women’s Conference voiced their impatience and complained that they had to constantly re-justify the importance and urgency of the matter while women’s agency negotiations were used by some member states to further other political agendas.
Charlotte Bunch of the campaigning coalition for Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR), which started lobbying for the creation of the agency in 2008 and of which ACTSA is an active member, said the campaign’s greatest concern now is not whether the gender entity will be created, but what it is going to be able to do in practice. GEAR is concerned with the funding of the agency, and would like to see the agency’s budget grow from the initial $500 million the Secretary-General suggested in his proposal to over $1 billion over time. There is a risk that the resolution will be watered down so much, that the new agency would become a mere coordinating or advisory body with little operational capacity, country-level presence and scope for effective cooperation with local civil society organisations.
Stephen Lewis of Aids-Free World warned that the current proposal lacks a clear operational plan for the new gender entity. In his statement he points out that, “the word catalytic is used seven times in the Secretary-General’s proposal to describe the functions of the gender entity.” Judging from past UN initiatives, “catalytic” often appears to be a way of saying, “with insufficient operational capacity and country-presence of its own”. The “catalytic” principle as used in UNIFEM, for example, has always lacked effectiveness, as it hinges on the willingness and ability of governments to fund and establish their own programmes and reduces the UN agency to a mere advisory role. The ineffectiveness and piecemeal nature of “catalytic” programmes is precisely the reason why demands for the new entity were made in the first place.
When ACTSA campaigned for the establishment of the UN agency for women which will now happen we always recognised that the need is not just for a UN agency for women but one which has power and resources to ensure effective action. We urge the British government to continue to take a leading role in negotiations to ensure not only is the UN agency for women established this year but it has the power, resources and credible leadership to ensure gender equity becomes a reality internationally.
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