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The UN General Assembly has authorized the establishment of a new UN agency devoted to women. Women’s advocates hope the new agency will make women’s concerns more of a priority at the UN. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.
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MARCO WERMAN: As we just heard, climate change will be a major issue at the U-N General Assembly next week, but the General Assembly has already taken action on another key concern. This week it passed a landmark resolution authorizing the establishment of new U.N. Agency for women, one that advocates hope will finally have some clout. They’ve long complained that women’s issues have been neglected and sidelined at the U.N. That’s in part because of the U.N.’s bureaucratic structure. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.
JEB SHARP: Before your eyes glaze over at the mention of U.N. bureaucracy, consider this: Everyone’s heard of UNICEF the U.N. agency for children. It has a budget of $3 billion and a big presence around the world. Now, name the U.N. entity that deals with women’s issues. Stumped? Well, there are actually several, including UNIFEM, that’s the U.N. development fund for women. Their budgets altogether are only a fraction of UNICEF’s.
CHARLOTTE BUNCH: The U.N. is at the forefront of declarations on women’s rights. Where it is behind is in not having a real agency to follow that up, more or less not having a UNICEF for women.
SHARP: That’s Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University.
BUNCH: I think because women’s rights came onto the agenda, you know, in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and the U.N. already had its major agencies in place so that women’s rights is a commitment but there isn’t the leadership at the high level, and there are not enough resources to turn that into a reality.
SHARP: Bunch says a U.N. women’s agency will mean there’s always somebody at the table advocating for women, whether at the top of the U.N. hierarchy or out in the field. In the past, their absence has been glaring she says.
BUNCH: I know a woman who was head of the peacekeeping mission in Burundi a few years ago, and they were having discussions at the U.N. level about what should happen in the peacekeeping mission. And at one point she looked around the table at who was there and she said, “I care about what’s happening to women who’s here who’s supposed to represent that issue?” There was total silence and she realized that the way in which the upper levels of the peacekeeping mission were structured there was no institutional presence.
SHARP: Another example advocates point to is the U.N. AIDS effort organized in the 1990s. The committee that ran U.N. AIDS had representatives from the World Bank and the U.N. Refugee Agency and others but no one designated to deal with women’s concerns. Paula Donovan is Co-Director of the advocacy group AIDS-Free World.
PAULA DONOVAN: On the AIDS issue in general in the United Nations, women’s concerns have always been an afterthought. You address an issue and afterwards you add women to the mix and squeeze them in where you can. And this new women’s agency will deal with that immediately by having a woman or several women at every meeting to bring the perspective of women to the table right from the start.
SHARP: Donovan says it’s premature for women’s rights advocates to celebrate, though. There’s a lot more work to be done to make the agency successful, not least of which is choosing the right leader. Prominent women’s rights advocate June Zeitlin campaigned for the agency. She wants to see someone appointed to head it by the end of the year.
JUNE ZEITLIN: Over the coming weeks we’re going to see serious candidates emerge, some names that have come forward people like Michele Bachelet the President of Chile or people at the U.N. who are already at the Under-Secretary-General level like the special rapporteur for children and armed conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy.
SHARP: Zeitlin says those are examples of the level of candidate she wants to see. Wellesley College Professor Filomena Steady hopes whoever it is; it’s someone who comes from outside the U.N. Steady used to work on women’s issues at the U.N. and remembers well the careerism and calcifying effect of the U.N. bureaucracy.
PROFESSOR STEADY: And so when you bring in someone from outside, usually they’re not caught up with those kinds of internal politics, and they can come in with a fresh vision especially if they’ve worked in women’s movements and they know what the issues are and what the challenge is.
SHARP: There will no doubt be lots of challenges, including securing a billion dollars in new funding for the budget. The overall challenge will be to translate well-meaning rhetoric into better lives for women. For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.
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