International Public and NGO Management
Advancement of women was a priority since the beginning of the United Nations, but its institutional path has been rocky.
The UN Charter was the first international treaty to mandate equal rights of men and women and, in 1947, the Economic and Social Council created a functional commission to deal with equality, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). This was done over the objections of some who claimed that the issue could be dealt with by the new Commission on Human Rights. Women delegates, however, insisted on having their commission because they suspected (correctly) that the Human Rights Commission would be run by men. The CSW from the outset was run by women and, for some 70 years has been a place in which gender issues could be discussed at the policy level. The Commission served as the preparatory body for four world conferences on women (Mexico City in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, Nairobi in 1985 and Beijing in 1995). Its secretariat evolved from a unit in the Human Rights Division, to a separate unit in New York when Human Rights moved to Geneva, to a Branch just before it moved to Vienna in 1979, a Division in 1988 and a Division for Intergovernmental Support in UN Women in 2010.
After the Mexico City Conference, there was pressure to create an Institute for Training and Research for the Advancement of Women. This was established in 1979 and was supposed to be located in Tehran. The ouster of the Shah, whose wife had supported the institute, led to the Institute being located in the Dominican Republic. The Institute undertook research and training, but lost much of its funding (from Norway and the Netherlands) after a negative evaluation in 1990, and it worked precariously into the 21st Century.
In 1976 also there was a concern that existing institutions would not provide assistance to developing countries. A result was the creation of the Voluntary Fund for the United Nations Decade for Women. The Assistant Secretary-General overseeing women's affairs, Mrs. Helvi Sipila, had been extremely successful in raising extra-budgetary funds for International Women’s Year and when the accounts were added up, there was a significant surplus of un-spent funds. The General Assembly had decided to extend the Fund to cover the Decade and had asked the Secretariat to propose arrangements on how to manage and use its resources.
In 1976, the Assembly, based on a report prepared by the Secretariat, agreed that the Fund should be used to supplement resources for the Decade, emphasizing technical cooperation but also making resources available for communication, for research and for strengthening regional and global institutions. It established a Consultative Committee to “to advise the Secretary-General on the application to the use of the Fund of the criteria” it had set out. It also allowed the Fund to participate in the Pledging Conferences from which the major development programs like UNDP and UNICEF raised funds.
The Voluntary Fund was eventually converted into the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on the eve of the Nairobi Conference. It was an independent fund until it encountered serious financial problems and was absorbed into UNDP.
The issue of how to deal with advancement of women in the 21st century was raised as part of a reform effort started in 2005. In 2006, a High-level Panel on System-wide Coherence was established. As one analysis by the International Women's Tribune Center noted:
One key component of the current UN Reform efforts is the establishment of more coherence among its programmes
on sustainable development, humanitarian assistance and the environment. This is the task of the High-Level Panel
on UN System-wide Coherence, created by the Secretary-General in February 2006 and touted to be the highestlevel
panel ever formed in the UN – with three sitting prime ministers serving as co-chairs and including two former
presidents and other high-level government and bilateral agency officials. It must be noted, however, that of the 15
members of the Panel, only three are women – a fact that many women’s groups have criticized.
Within its mandate, the Panel will review the gender architecture in the UN system. It will present its
recommendations in August 2006 in time for the 61st General Assembly Session in September 2006. The UN’s effort
to achieve coherence between its international standard-setting function and its country operations is also meant
to support Member States in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
And while the UN has been a champion in many ways for the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality,
particularly in setting global norms and standards in these areas, the programmes addressing women’s specific needs and interests remain largely sidelined and under-funded in the wider UN context. For example, the women’s components of various UN agencies, including the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the Division forthe Advancement of Women (DAW) receive only US$66.5 million out of the organization’s US$18 billion budget. Moreover, none of the heads of the four women’s agencies in the UN – UNIFEM, DAW, the Office of the Special
Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI) and the International Research and Training Institute
for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) – holds the position of Under-Secretary General. The Director of
UNIFEM, the largest of the four in terms of staffing and operational functions, is not even equivalent to the rank of
an Assistant Secretary-General.
This gross under-funding and sidelining of women’s issues and concern in the UN persists...
The High-level Panel included Stephen Lewis, a Canadian diplomat who had been the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africaand he proposed the creation of a new international multilateral agency for women headed by an Under Secretary-General. This was one of the few proposals of the panel that was endorsed by the General Assembly. Lewis' argument was set out in a speech at Harvard University in advance of the Panel meeting. (Excerpts from Stephen Lewis’ Remarks to the High-Level Panel on UN Reform, ITWC Reform Report, p. 23).
He stated:
There is a crying need for an international agency for women. Every stitch of evidence we have, right across the
entire spectrum of gender inequality suggests the urgent need for a multilateral agency. The great dreams of the
international conferences in Vienna, Cairo and Beijing have never come to pass. It matters not the issue: whether
it’s levels of sexual violence, or HIV/AIDS, or maternal mortality, or armed conflict, or economic empowerment, or
parliamentary representation, women are in terrible trouble. And things are getting no better.
“This Panel can create such an agency and show fundamental courage by doing so, or it can tinker at the edges of
‘gender architecture’ and consign the world of women, yet again, to perpetual second-rate status.
“… what we need is a full-fledged agency with real operational capacity on the ground to build partnerships with
governments, to engage in public policy, to design and finance programmatic interventions for women, to give NGOs
and community-based women’s groups the support their voices and ideas have never had, to extract money from
bilateral donors, to whip the UN family into shape, to bring substance and know-how to the business of gender
mainstreaming, to involve women in every facet of life from development to trade to culture to peace and security,
to lobby vociferously and indefatigably for every aspect of gender equality, to have sufficient staff and resources to
make everyone sit up and take notice. That’s exactly what UNICEF does for children. Why can’t we have the same
for more than half of humankind?
As UN-Women's website states:
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
In doing so, UN Member States took an historic step in accelerating the Organization’s goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women.
The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system which focussed exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment: Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
The main roles of UN Women are:
To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms
To help Member States to implement these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.
To hold the UN system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress.
The four units were merged and a new secretariat and governance structure was developed. UN Women is headed by an Executive Director and two Deputy Executive Directors (one for policy and program and the other for Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnerships. It is now overseen by an Executive Board, but is also supposed to respond to the CSW.
The current Executive Director is Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka from South Africa. She came out of national politics and government. From 2005 to 2008, she served as Deputy President of South Africa, overseeing programmes to combat poverty and bring the advantages of a growing economy to the poor, with a particular focus on women. Prior to this, she served as Minister of Minerals and Energy from 1999 to 2005 and Deputy Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry from 1996 to 1999. She was a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 1996 as part of South Africa’s first democratic government.
Her predecessor as Executive Director, Michelle Bachelet from Chile. She was one of a number of former heads of state and government who became senior UN officials. She had been president of Chile (and before that Minister of Defence) who encountered term limits. She brought considerable notice to UN Women but not much experience with international organizations. The two deputies brought different experience. Lakshmi Puri, the Deputy for intergovernmental support and strategic partnerships came from UNCTAD and the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, having been earlier in her career a member of the Indian Foreign Service. The other deputy, John Hendra (Canadian), came from UNDP where he had been Resident Coordinator in Vietnam and previously in Tanzania and Latvia, as well as UN headquarters.
UN-Women is overseen formally by the Executive Board of all UN funds, but gets much of its substantive guidance from the Commission on the Status of Women. Gender has been strongly incorporated in the Sustainable Development Goals and UN-Women will be an active participant in monitoring.
It continues to support the Commission, ECOSOC and the General Assembly and has begun to establish country representatives to help implement projects.