Statement by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid UNFPA Executive Director

Good afternoon.

It gives me great pleasure to address you this afternoon on behalf of United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), World Food Programme (WFP) and my organization, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. I have been entrusted with the responsibility of sharing with you, the joint meeting of our Executive Board members, the progress made and challenges ahead in gender mainstreaming.

The Context

One of the guiding principles of the United Nations is the principle of equality between men and women. It is found in the Charter of the Organization and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many countries have the same commitment to gender equality in the preambles of their constitutions.

We all share this goal and our agencies are mandated to promote it. Yet, today, we are far from achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, which constitute Goal 3 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): 

• In no region of the world are women equal to men in legal, social and economic rights.
• Gender inequalities in economic opportunities, in vulnerability to violence and in power and political voice remain widespread in developed and developing countries alike.
• To this day, every minute, one woman dies from complications of giving birth, an estimated 529,000 a year.
• Women are the majority amongst the poor, including amongst the poorest of the poor.

Today, a central organizing principle of the United Nations is the recognition that no enduring solution to society’s most pressing problems can be found without the full participation and empowerment of the world’s women and girls. There is a mountain of research showing that, when women are empowered through access to assets, to education and health care and economic opportunities and legal rights, the benefits extend far beyond the individual, benefiting also the family, community and the nation.

Gender Mainstreaming and Governance

As the United Nations system embarks on a rights-based approach to development, humanitarian and peace-building activities, the issues of gender equality and equity and women’s rights have assumed even greater importance. As members of the various Executive Boards, you know that mainstreaming gender is an essential strategy not only for greater progress within nations towards gender equality and equity, but also for greater effectiveness within the United Nations system as part of the broader United Nations reforms of the Organization.

Of course, we all understand that gender mainstreaming is not an end in itself. It is a strategy that involves a process; it is a means to an end—the end being gender equality and women’s empowerment. And it is a process to which the United Nations system is fully committed.

At its coordination segment last July, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) devoted a session to gender mainstreaming in which it reviewed the implementation of conclusions adopted in 1997. As you will recall, in those agreed conclusions, the Council defined gender mainstreaming as a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and social spheres so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. At the session, ECOSOC members adopted a resolution recognizing the progress that has been made in gender mainstreaming, but calling for further efforts by the United Nations system to fully incorporate gender perspectives in their programmes and evaluation and monitoring processes.

Mandates on Gender Equality

As we all know, mandates on gender equality have been articulated and agreed upon by Member States in many forums. These include the international conferences of the 1990s, particularly the International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo, and the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing. The Security Council underscored the principle of gender equality in its unprecedented resolution 1325 (2000) on women, peace and security. Gender equality has also been emphasized in various regions of the world through regional plans of action for women’s advancement, and at the country level in more than 120 national plans of action for gender equality. All of this progress builds on the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which sets the international legal standard for gender equality and women’s advancement.

Today, each United Nations agency represented on this panel has established policies and/or plans of action on gender equality. Gender equality and women's rights are also incorporated in our organizations' strategies and multi-year funding frameworks. At the recent triennial comprehensive policy review, the mandate for gender equality was acknowledged as central to United Nations coordination efforts. And it is, of course, central to the fulfillment of the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs As the Millennium Project stressed this Monday, when it released its reports: Gender equality is essential for achieving the MDGs and specific interventions to address gender inequality should be an intrinsic part of all MDG-based investment packages.

At the country level, action to translate global and regional agreements into national plans has stimulated important progress, resulting in concrete changes in laws and policies and improved options and opportunities for women and girls. The United Nations agencies support countries to take forward their commitments and to implement their development priorities and plans with a gender perspective. In the spirit of harmonization and simplification, we see increasing examples of United Nations organizations working together on the ground—each from their comparative advantage—to provide coordinated support.

UN in Action

In every region of the world and on nearly every theme, there are increasing numbers of partnerships to strengthen collaborative approaches to support gender equality among our organizations – and that includes UNIFEM –at the country, regional and global levels. At the country level, these often occur through inter-agency theme groups on gender equality. One good example that has been operating for nearly 10 years is the Inter-agency Working Group on Gender and Development in India. It brings together the United Nations system with other partners and has supported a stronger gender dimension in the country’s ninth and tenth five-year plans and in the processes of the Common Country Assessment/United Nations Development Assistance Framework (CCA/UNDAF). With leadership rotating amongst United Nations organizations, this technical group succeeded in making the census process more gender-sensitive and it built the capacity of enumerators to take gender into account.

The inter-agency theme groups on gender have great potential to strengthen gender expertise and coordination within United Nations country teams. They can lower transaction costs for programme countries. UNIFEM, UNDP, UNFPA and the Division for the Advancement of Women of the United Nations Secretariat have jointly produced a global resource guide for gender theme groups. The guide gives priority to capacitybuilding and highlights good practices to influence and support inter-agency coordination mechanisms, especially MDG, CCA/UNDAF poverty reduction strategy papers processes.

In crises, where gender concerns are so important, but too often neglected, major efforts have been made over the past few years to mainstream gender in humanitarian action. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) has established a Reference Group on Gender and Humanitarian Assistance that has undertaken a variety of initiatives, ranging from a gender analysis of Consolidated Appeals to developing a gender-sensitive capacities and vulnerabilities analysis training module. It is designed to ensure that all gender issues are considered in all stages of the humanitarian and recovery planning processes. This year, the IASC Reference Group on Sexual Violence is finalizing a matrix that will give practical guidance to humanitarian actors on coordination and action for the prevention and management of sexual violence in humanitarian crises. For emergency programmes, WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization have jointly developed guidelines for socio-economic and gender analysis and programme design.

With regard to the devastating tsunami, massive efforts are currently underway to save lives and help individuals, families and communities to recover from this tremendous tragedy. UNFPA, UNIFEM, WHO, UNDP, UNICEF, WFP and other agencies are working to raise awareness of the gender implications of the disaster itself, and also of the varied modalities of disaster response which are underway. Our agencies are joining forces to plan multi sectoral gender-focussed assessments in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. These will help support United Nations country teams and national partners to facilitate the full involvement of women and girls in humanitarian and recovery programmes.

Inter-agency coordination on mainstreaming gender equality in post-conflict situations and on HIV/AIDS is also increasing in many countries. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, UNFPA is leading a joint initiative, which constitutes the first national comprehensive integrated response to sexual violence in a conflict country. With the involvement of nearly a dozen United Nations agencies as well as non- governmental organizations, and the Government, the United Nations country team conducted a comprehensive joint needs assessment and developed a multisectoral framework for responding to sexual violence, which addresses a broad range of urgent issues from medical support for victims to re-establishing the rule of law to prevent impunity. In Sierra Leone, UNIFEM, UNDP and WFP are supporting the national machinery for women so that it can help the Government prepare its initial report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. And in Burundi, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP and UNIFEM worked closely together to support the women’s ministry, with a particular focus on reviving the coalition against violence to bring in new strategic members like the police, the media and the human rights commission and to launch a national action plan to eliminate violence against women.

At the global level, all of our organizations work together through the Inter-Agency Task Force on Women, Peace and Security coordinated by the Office of the Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Women’s Advancement, to stimulate stronger joint action to implement Security Council resolution 1325 (2000).

Coordinated action to support countries to engender MDG processes is also expanding. This often takes the form of support to national machineries for women. In Ecuador, UNIFEM, UNICEF and UNFPA are coordinating their support to the national machinery and are working with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to prepare and disseminate background reports that highlight indicators needed to bring a stronger gender equality dimension to MDG processes throughout the region.

In Egypt, the girls’ education initiative is the joint United Nations programme being implemented by the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood and supported by eight United Nations agencies, with UNICEF as the lead agency. The objective of this initiative is in line with the UNDAF objective, which is to promote systematic and coherent action to tackle the issue of gender disparity in education. This initiative has been under implementation since 2001, resulting in the establishment of 451 girls friendly schools in seven governorates.

Globally, the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative has gained momentum in spearheading efforts of multiple partners around actions aimed at achieving the 2005 gender parity goals and beyond. One continuing challenge will be to promote gender mainstreaming in national education sector plans, including those with the Education for All fast-track initiative.

Another positive development, which enhances accountability, is the use by all of our agencies of gender-responsive budgeting. As a result, inter-agency partnerships are emerging in many countries where gender budgeting is used to secure greater investments in such areas as girls’ education, sexual and reproductive health, women’s political participation and in programmes to end gender-based violence.

Yet, despite all of this good news and good work, the data on gender equality and the continuing violations of the rights of women and girls remain very disturbing. This was recently highlighted on World AIDS Day, when we heard that HIV infection rates among women are increasing in every region—as a result of gender discrimination and violence. All over the world, girls and women continue to be denied decision-making roles, left in abject poverty and vulnerable to trafficking. Discriminatory laws remain on the books in some countries, as do laws whose outcomes discriminate against women. While progress is being made in expanding education for girls, we will still not meet the first 2005 MDG target for gender equality in education in sub-Saharan Africa or southern and western Asia. Despite what we know, despite the convention on women’s rights, despite Security Council resolution 1325 (2000), violations of the rights and bodily integrity of women and girls continue unabated in conflict and post-conflict situations, even after assistance arrives—and sometimes as a result of it.

So clearly, we must ask ourselves: What are the challenges? What more do we need to do?

Challenges

Good gender policies are in place and there are numerous examples of effective implementation and strong coordination, many of which I have just mentioned. However, assessments reveal that these innovative efforts are not fully institutionalized in the day-to-day routine of our agencies or within countries and may not be sustained as an integral part of the way we conduct our business.

And we must ask ourselves, why?

One of the challenges is that, after three decades of United Nations world conferences on women, work on gender equality and equity and women's empowerment is still not viewed as an area that is essential and indispensable for all development and humanitarian activities. Despite the advances that have been made, gender concerns are still considered "soft", marginal issues and because of this, they are often pushed down near the bottom of the list of priorities, thereby jeopardizing chances for greater progress. Also, when gender equality is a 'cross-cutting' issue, there is danger that it could become invisible. Serious efforts need to be made to ensure that mainstreaming gender concerns best use the available financial and human resources when critical decisions are made, whether within organizations or at country level.

There are also challenges having to do with organizational change. These include the need to increase resources dedicated to gender mainstreaming, and to address the lack of knowledge and skill of staff at all levels on gender issues. There is also a need to address the lack of proper recognition for specialized gender expertise, as well as the lack of effective performance appraisals and results-based evaluations with respect to gender equality and women’s empowerment goals.

Other challenges include weak sex disaggregated data and lack of tracking, monitoring and accountability at significant levels. If we are to meet these challenges with the full involvement of our management and staff, we must build our capacities and strengthen commitment to women’s empowerment and gender equality. Such organizational transformation requires changing the way we conduct business, changing the organizational culture, attitudes and behaviours.

Our reviews of work on gender mainstreaming in the United Nations system demonstrate that we undoubtedly now have greater capacity and commitment and more links to diverse constituencies to promote gender equality. As we move forward, the next frontier is institutionalizing this capacity and commitment, so that we can better support and demonstrate accountability for gender equality at the country level. Work on gender-responsive budgets, on disaggregating data by sex, on incorporating performance on gender equality into staff assessments, and on building strong knowledge networks on gender equality is at different stages, but very much present in all of our agencies.

At the end of the day, working to achieve gender equality is a task that requires stronger partnerships at all levels among Member States, among United Nations organizations, between women and men, and with women’s and social justice movements that continue to demand accountability to commitments made over the past 30 years to end gender discrimination and violence.