NEW YORK - Stephen Lewis, a former deputy executive director of the UN children's agency UNICEF, is one of the strongest advocates of gender-empowerment. He continues to pursue his cause relentlessly.
Addressing a meeting in New York last week, the outspoken Canadian said with a degree of exaggerated sarcasm that the United Nations, after more than 60 years in existence, has only now discovered that there are two genders in the world: male and female.
Lewis' comment was prompted by speculation that the world body may be taking the initial steps -- in a long arduous journey -- towards the creation of a separate UN agency for women.
Currently, the UN has myriads of agencies, including those dealing with refugees, children, health, education, the weather, trade, housing, tourism, food, agriculture, and the environment.
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| Though she is in a chain at a political demonstration in Pakistan on Friday, her participation shows the growing gender empowerment in the Muslim country, which, however, has to go a long way towards gender equality. The setting up of a separate UN agency to deal with women’s issues is expected to turn UN rhetoric on women empowerment into concrete action. AFP |
But there isn't a single UN agency dealing specifically with women. The closest, the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), is not a full-fledged UN agency but an appendage of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and surviving on a meagre budget.
A longstanding proposal for the creation of a separate agency for women has been making painfully slow progress for several years now. The proposal calls for a new "gender architecture," including the consolidation of three existing UN entities -- UNIFEM, the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the UN Division for the Advancement of Women -- under a single new agency.
"Remember, the UN only appointed its first woman Under-Secretary-General in 1986. That's almost 40 years after the UN came into being and that's incredible, if you think of it", Lewis said. "So the UN has been slow to respond to the needs of women, and I think the UN now understands that it cannot be negligent any longer," he added.
The world body and its Secretariat have remained so overly sexist -- and heavily weighted in favour of men -- that a General Assembly proposal calling for a 50:50 gender parity in the UN system is still a long way towards full implementation after it was adopted decades ago.
As a result, there has been a huge outcry from women's groups who continue to lambast the organisation for preaching gender empowerment to the world at large, but failing to practise it in its own backyard.
The major decision makers at the UN are still men -- even though the first woman deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette was appointed only in 1998 following a General Assembly resolution adopted the previous year. The deputy's post is the second highest ranking job in the UN totem pole, after that of the Secretary-General.
As thousands of women from all over the world gather at the UN for a two week session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) beginning March 2, the two politically sensitive issues of gender equality and gender empowerment will take centre stage. At last count, 5,281 representatives, mostly women, from 463 non-governmental and women's and human rights organisations had registered to participate in next week's CSW session.
Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University, says the women specific units (at the United Nations) are splintered, small and shamefully underfunded for the tasks they are asked to take up, while the coordination of the UN system's gender mainstreaming work is weak.
Taina Bien-Aim, executive director of the New York-based Equality Now, points out that "while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has publicly and repeatedly formulated his commitment to address women's rights, the outcome of such pledges is negligible at best, and alarmingly weak, at worse, considering the urgency before us." The UN's rhetoric on empowering women within the UN and around the world is not matched by the required resources and resolve to achieve its stated goals on gender, she added.
In a submission to the CSW, the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) Campaign says it strongly supports the creation of a new consolidated and stronger UN entity for women that will greatly advance not only gender equality but also the empowerment of women and women's human rights worldwide.
The GEAR Campaign, which represents more than 275 organisations in some 50 countries, pointedly says: "The United Nations still lacks a strong driver at the leadership level, both at headquarters and at the country level, as well as a systematic and effective mechanism to delivery on many of the essentials commitments made."
The proposal for a new women's agency also includes a demand for a $1.0 billion annual budget. The women's groups make a comparison with the annual UNICEF budget, dealing with children, which averages over $2.0 billion annually.
Surely, they say, half of that would not be excessive for the world's women. And, surely, ameliorating the lives of half the global population, namely women, is worth $1.0 billion a year -- for a start.
But whether or not the women's groups can pull it off, this time around, remains to be seen. |
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