AFTER FOUR years of difficult talks, and 15 years after the landmark Beijing women’s conference, the member states of the United Nations have finally agreed to establish an umbrella agency to represent the interests of women. It will be responsible for supervising projects around the world, lobbying for better laws for women, and ensuring that other UN agencies also promote women’s equality.
Known officially as the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UNEGEEW), although to avoid the awful acronym, officials say it will be referred to simply as “UN Women”. The agency will consolidate four little-known UN divisions: the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women; the Division for the Advancement of Women; the UN Development Fund for Women; and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women.
The agency will have both operational and what the UN calls “normative” roles: dealing with policies and promoting and monitoring international covenants and agreements, working with the Commission on the Status of Women, an intergovernmental body, and with other UN bodies. But it will be hobbled from the start by the reality that the suggested annual $500 million budget for its fieldwork will have to be raised through voluntary contributions from member states – the first challenge for the new organisation.
The agency will be headed by a new undersecretary general for women, and reports from the UN suggest that a struggle is already under way over the job (nominations close mid-July). Developing countries have made clear, however, that a nominee from western countries, the main backers of the agency’s formation, is unlikely to be endorsed. The favourite is popular former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, a socialist who herself experienced torture under the country’s military regime in the 1970s and 1980s.
The welcome decision to establish UN Women is an important political acknolwedgment that relying simply on a policy of “gender mainstreaming”, the tailoring of development and other programmes to take account of women, and the endorsement of laws or conventions supporting women at local level, are simply not enough to redress global gender imbalances and empower women. The new agency, which will become operational on January 1st next, has a monumental task, but represents an important step to that end.