Half Of Humankind
I hate to go on and on repeating the old saying that women are not a “special interest group” but are half of humankind. The results of the UN-organized four World Conferences on Women, Equality, Development and Peace, from 1976-1995 had confirmed this is the approach we should take. I am disappointed that in recent discussions with delegates and non-governmental organization representatives who attended this year’s Commission on the Status of Women on the subject of new proposal for strengthening gender equality architecture. They see gender equality and advancement of women as “specific group” issue. As part of UN reform, delegates proposed a set-up of a “special entity” in the UN Secretariat for promotion of action on gender equality and advancement of women. For me, this kind of proposal is the equivalent to creating of a larger “ghetto” to deal with crossed-cutting issue which should be “mainstreamed and integrated” with other political, economic and social development activities. Taking this “Special Group” approach is against the Beijing Platform for Action that was approved by the General Assembly in 1995. Just to get more funds to support gender-specific bureaucratic entity is short- sighted and waste of limited financial resource in the long run. Recent UN evaluation study of “national machinery” for women’s advancement found that “special unit” set up for women’s advancement in government bureaucratic structure is not an effective way to achieve the goal of gender equality. The UN should take lessons from these past mistakes and decentralize the gender equality issues instead of centralized them. Coordination of varies gender structures in the UN system can be done at an already-existed Executive Board for Coordination and its High-level Committee on Programme and Management. A lot of work also need to be done through Human Resource Action Plan of the UN Secretariat to increase the number of women through recruitment and promotion of women at senior political and administrative level to achieve the 50/50 target, set up over a decade ago. For years now, there has been no achievement beyond 36/37 per cent for
women in the Professional and higher categories of staff in the UN. Secretariat. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at this year March 8 Commemoration of International Women’s Day that he was convinced that in women, the world has at its disposal the most significant, and yet largely untapped potential for development and peace. With the help of Deputy-Secretary General Asha-Rose Migiro, he could provide leadership to take immediate action, speed up the drive for “gender parity” in the UN, and for “mainstreaming gender equality” in activities of organs and bodies of the United Nations System.
Leave a Reply