Let’s act now: lose no more time creating a new UN agency for women
Last September, in a thrilling moment in the history of the United Nations and all its member countries, the General Assembly voted unanimously in favour of creating a new women’s agency. This agency is essential and long overdue. Julia Greenberg of AIDS Free World tells more about the potential the agency has to support women affected by HIV and how we all need to act now.
The HIV pandemic has hit the world’s women with brutal force. All over the world, women are more likely to contract HIV, die of it, raise the children left orphaned by it, care for others who get sick, and bear the brunt of the associated stigma.
We strongly believe that this agency is the best hope for the world’s women. Ninety-nine per cent of maternal deaths occur in the developing world. Sexual violence, in conflict situations as well as in the quotidian lives of women everywhere, is part of the intrinsic fabric of almost all societies. Poverty, gender inequality and social injustice fuel the AIDS epidemic, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where women make up nearly 60 per cent of infected adults. All the while, women fall through the cracks of international good intentions, programmes and policies. We must act now.
“The new UN agency for women represents a critical opportunity for the world to deliver, finally, for half its population. The UN, created by the world’s governments, is the only institution that can move all of its member states to address gender inequality and violence against women. If it fails to do this, we will not meet a single Millennium Development Goal,” said Stephen Lewis, Co-Director of AIDS-Free World.
We ask you to join us in calling for:
Creating the women’s agency by September 2009, the end of the current session of the General Assembly. A framework for the design of the entity has been debated by member states during an informal consultation, and the UN Secretary-General has already begun to respond to the questions and concerns that arose during the debate. We must not lose momentum.
Identifying a superb leader through a global and transparent search. The new Under-Secretary General selected to lead the agency must be identified through an intensive, open process. The search process must not be coloured either by UN insiders jockeying for position or by richer countries pushing for representation.
An initial budget of one billion US dollars. The existing components of the UN women’s machinery (UNIFEM, DAW, INSTRAW and OSAGI, all of which will be folded into the new agency) currently have a combined budget of $220 million dollars. This insultingly low level effectively rules out any significant work. One billion dollars is the minimum needed to ensure autonomous country-level programmes with resources and authority. The agency needs real funding to make a real difference.
A new Executive Board that holds the agency accountable to all women, everywhere. The new women’s agency should report to its own Executive Board, not to an expanded board of UNDP/UNFPA — neither of which has a broad enough mandate. Women leaders within civil society, particularly those at the grassroots, should be given opportunities from the outset to contribute their expertise and creativity to the development of an entirely new mechanism. The new agency should go farther than the UN has ever gone before in ensuring the meaningful engagement of civil society. Every woman in every country should know that the UN has created a bold new structure in her name and that it is accountable to her.
We ask you to join us in calling on the UN to keep the promise, do it right, and do it now.
Contact: Julia Greenberg, AIDS-Free World
Email: juliagreenberg@aids-freeworld.org
Tel: +1 347-564-8935
Linda Carrier-Walker, International Council of Nurses
Email: carrwalk@icn.ch
Tel: +1 41 22 908 01 00
