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RIGHTS: U.N. Confident of New Agency for Women
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 7 (IPS) - As the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) concluded its two-week session in New York Friday, United Nations officials remain hopeful that the proposal for a new U.N. agency for women would become a reality.
“I believe the process is now back on track,” said Assistant Secretary-General Rachel Mayanja, the U.N. special adviser on gender issues and advancement of women.
Asked about the current status of the proposal, she told reporters it is now before the 192-member General Assembly.
“It is in the inter-governmental process. They started discussing it last year, and somehow they are not able to advance beyond formal meetings,” Mayanja said.
She also said that the current president of the General Assembly, H.E. Srgjan Kerim, has recently appointed facilitators, and they had one meeting last month.
The proposal for a new U.N. women’s agency was made in November 2006 by a 15-member “High-Level Panel of U.N. System-Wide Coherence”, comprising heads of government, former world political leaders, and senior government and U.N. officials.
The high-level panel called for the creation of a “new gender architecture”, which includes the consolidation of three existing U.N. entities — the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women — under a single new U.N. agency to be headed by an under-secretary-general, the third highest ranking post in the world body.
But its implementation will require the blessings of the 192-member General Assembly, which has not given any indication of how it will respond. As a result, the proposal has virtually remained in limbo.
Asked by IPS whether there was resistance to the proposal in the General Assembly, Mayanja said: “I’m not aware of any resistance.”
“I think the member states are looking into it. They have questions, they have to understand how this new entity will function, what structure this will take, what the mandate is,” she said.
Additionally, member states want to know “how it would relate to other existing entities, and how this would affect gender mainstreaming because all entities of the U.N. system are involved in promoting gender equality.”
“So, there are issues that they have to resolve before we can see the entity,” she explained.
Jessica Neuwirth, president of the New York-based Equality Now, says the proposal for a U.N. agency for women “is languishing in political stalemate”.
She told IPS: “This does a great injustice to women. After all of the discussion that has gone into the idea over the past few years of consolidating the gender architecture of the U.N. it is high time to move forward with this idea, which would strengthen the capacity of the U.N. to act in a coordinated and strategic manner for the advancement of women.”
For too long, she said, the popular trend of gender mainstreaming in the U.N. has led to gender “disappearancing”.
“We need an agency that represents women and moves the agenda (including gender mainstreaming) forward effectively,” Neuwirth said. She said this agency should be established as quickly as possible and should be adequately funded to ensure that it is able to carry out its important mission.
Asked about a 1997 General Assembly resolution calling for 50:50 gender parity in senior U.N. jobs in the secretariat by the year 2000, Mayanja said: “We’re trying hard, we’re trying very hard. We have many challenges.”
She said the secretary-general is very much committed to reach gender parity, but he started from a big deficit. And therefore, it’s not going to happen overnight.
“He’s working towards it and he’s making it very clear to his senior colleagues that he wants to see gender parity achieved, and he has actually given out instructions to this effect,” Mayanja said.
Ban also convened a policy committee meeting in which he dedicated the whole discussion to the representation of women in the Secretariat.
“So, I have absolutely no doubt that the secretary-general is committed. Now, of course he’s not going to achieve this by himself alone, all of us have to contribute, all of us, not just us in the Secretariat, but also member states putting forward candidates that could be selected by the Secretary General.”
She also said that “qualified women are in demand and there’s competition…They are not just sitting there; they may not choose the U.N. We have to be attractive; it is not just matter of qualification. But it is also about what we’re offering.”
Asked about the six-month delay in the appointment of a new executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the primary U.N. body dealing with women’s issues, Mayanja said: “That I cannot answer because I don’t know.”
She said the delay may be due to the long process, and the many candidates who have to be interviewed and reviewed. “In other words, the recruitment process is not a short process. And I’m not a part of the process, so I can’t really tell you how many applicants there were.”