|
Julia Greenberg, AIDS-Free World's Associate Director, tells the inside story behind the sudden groundswell of support within the United Nations for a new agency for women.
In the heat of the dog days of a New York summer, winds of change are blowing through the musty air conditioning vents of the UN secretariat. Ambassadors from around the globe are locked in a debate about a series of reforms that they hope will result in renewed public faith in the UN system. Amazingly, they seem to be pegging their hopes on the world's women.
Recent History
AIDS-Free World's call for a complete overhaul of the UN's response to the rights and needs of women in began 2005 when Stephen Lewis and Paula Donovan, our Co-Directors, and then the team that drove the work of the office of the UN Special envoy for AIDS in Africa, began mentioning the limitless potential of a new women's agency in all of Stephen Lewis's speeches about the horrendous impact of AIDS on the women of Africa. In 2006, gender equality found its way on to the agenda of the UN reform process spearheaded by Kofi Annan, due largely to the high level advocacy of the Envoy Team combined with the community mobilization and tireless activism of a global coalition of women's groups called the GEAR Campaign (Gender Equality Architecture Reform). The envoy team's public statements about the UN's woefully inadequate women's programs (the combined annual budgets for all of the UN agencies concerned with gender totaled 65 million in 2006, while UNICEF's budget was 2 billion), and intensive lobbying of members of the High Level Panel tasked by Annan to recommend a series of reforms on "system-wide coherence," helped lead to a concrete recommendation for a wholly new women's agency, ambitiously funded, with operational capacity at country level, headed by an Under-Secretary General.
Since this recommendation was made, the proposal for the women's agency has been caught up in political wrangling among member states over other reforms recommended by the High Level Panel on such issues as governance and funding. These are critically important issues, especially for poor countries in the Group of 77 block (G77) who live with the destructive legacy of the conditions, such as structural adjustment programs, that have been imposed upon them by the the World Bank and the IMF. While we did not (and would never) diminish the impact of this damaging legacy, we bridled at the contention by many G77 countries that that the proposal for the women's agency was, in effect, a condition imposed on them by donors. Moreover, we lamented the lack of will and leadership in the secretariat, who seemed to more concerned with hanging on to jobs they might lose in the proposed new structure, than with upholding the core values of equality enshrined in the UN charter.
And so ambassadors and UN officials continued to talk and the proposal for the women's agency languished. And during that very same time period we saw the rape of hundreds of women in Kenya during post-election violence with no UN agency to address their specific needs, a prolonged battle within UNAIDS to come up with coherent gender guidance for member states, which was only issued in April 2008, just before the Secretary General reported that 61% of the populations in Sub-Saharan Africa infected with HIV were women.
In January 2008, we began to see signs of life when the new Secretary General appointed two new Co-Chairs, Augustine Mahiga, the ambassador from Tanzania, and Paul Kavanagh, the ambassador from Ireland, to resurrect the system-wide coherence process, and thus, the proposal for a new women's agency. Mahiga and Kavanagh have proven to be shrewd and tireless stewards of the reform agenda. They recognized that they had to significantly narrow the scope of the High Level Panel recommendations in order to achieve consensus, and as such they informed the General Assembly that they would convene a series of "Informal Consultations" (General Assembly meetings) on four aspects of the High Level Panel's recommendations: 1) "Delivering as One" (an attempt to streamline the on-the ground operations of UN country teams); 2) governance 3) funding and 4) gender.
May 2008
A two-day trip from India to Liberia and many countries in between
Beginning in April, Stephen Lewis and I, on behalf of AIDS-Free World, embarked on a global quest to encourage UN ambassadors, especially those from the G77 block, to speak out in support of the women's agency at the two informal consultations on gender scheduled for May and June. We knew that the only hope for a consensus in the General Assembly was if developing country voices added their demands to the chorus of donor countries, specifically the Northern Europeans, who had been very vocal in their support.
A UN mission reflects, with almost uncanny accuracy, the position and condition of the country it represents. A visit to India involves being led by several polite aids, through a series of interconnected rooms, each with beautifully appointed artwork and rugs, into the inner sanctum office of the ambassador. By contrast, the missions of the poorest of the Sub-Saharan African countries boast broken elevators, faulty air conditioners and often require walking up four or five flights of stairs of a rickety brownstone, un-strategically located several blocks from the UN.
India: Anticipating resistance to our appeals from India, a powerful presence in the General Assembly, we were encouraged by what we heard during our visit. Over tea, India's brilliant and provocative Ambassador Nirupam Sen assured us that there was almost unanimous agreement among developing countries that a new women's agency was needed, but that it was necessary to finesse the politics. The main concerns of poor countries, he told us, were around governance. The G77 is interested in strengthening the UN's technical assistance and financing functions, while northern countries like the United States are more comfortable with this power in the hands of the Bretton Woods institutions-the World Bank and the IMF. He rejected the our notion that the G77 was holding the women's agency hostage to negotiate for other reforms, and asserted that the system-wide coherence exercise was in fact essential to the UN — a UN that was relevant to the realities of the countries on the poorer half of the planet.
He then dropped a key piece of information that would later be confirmed by many other countries. India, as well as Mexico, two very powerful countries within the system, would consider delinking the proposal for the women's agency from the package of reforms recommended by the high level panel, if that was what was necessary to push it through. This information signaled a significant breakthrough on the position of the G77, which in all their previous statements on the system-wide coherence process, stressed the importance of an integrated process resulting in a single decision on the package of reforms.
Liberia: We were greeted by the extremely impressive and kind Ambassador Milton Nathaniel Barnes whose mission consists of a barely-furnished, two-room office with a staff of three. His Excellency actually ran for president against Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who after defeating him, appointed him as her man in New York. Proudly representing a nation led by the first democratically elected woman in Africa, he told us that Liberia's role at the UN required being out in front on the questions of gender. Given the paucity of staff and funding for the mission in this time of transition in Monrovia, he was grateful that we reminded him of the time and date of the consultation on gender, and he assured us he would be happy to speak in support of the women's agency.
We proceeded on to visits with Jordan, Brazil, and Kenya, and heard again, that support for the women's agency was widespread, but that the complexities of negotiating the extensive package of reforms would be the greatest obstacle to its coming into existence.
Meanwhile, when not tromping from mission to mission, AIDS-Free World continued to expose the willfully obstructionist tendencies of the leadership in the Secretariat. In a speech about sexual violence in the Congo delivered shortly before the events described above, Stephen Lewis exhorted: " ...But the creation of the new agency is bogged down in the UN General Assembly, caught up in the crossfire between the developed and developing countries. The Secretary-General could break that impasse if he pulled out all the stops. He and the Deputy-Secretary General make speeches that give the impression they support the women's agency, but in truth the language is so carefully and artfully couched as to gut the agency of impact on the ground, in-country, were it ever to come into being. Again, the advisors read the tea leaves in a soiled and broken chalice."
May 16, 2008
The First Informal Consultation on Gender
On a crisp May afternoon, I quickly flashed my UN pass (which does not allow me access to closed Informal Consultations) to the distracted guard posted at conference room four, and found a seat in the observer section.
The Co-Chair from Tanzania began the discussion: "The Co-Chairs sense a widespread commitment to the objectives and actions agreed in Beijing in 1995 and reiterated on numerous occasions since then. It is therefore fully understandable why the High Level Panel sought to make recommendations which in their view would enhance the UN's ability to achieve these...To use a summary phrase: Gender is development. We have heard this constantly during our widespread consultations. Our purpose in advancing System-wide Coherence is to attain better and more effective delivery of development to all sections of societies in need."
Not a bad start.
The heads of the UN agencies concerned with gender and women's empowerment-UNIFEM, UNICEF, OSAGI, DAW and UNFPA-were then asked to share their perspectives on the system's strengths and weaknesses. The usual grandstanding ensued, with the each agency head ignoring the instructions of the Co-Chairs and listing their accomplishments rather than reflecting on the failures of the current structure.
UNIFEM, however, changed the tone of discussion completely by clearly detailing programming gaps in coherence, authority and accountability. "This debate to help countries improve gender equality is very important. Its essence is about the relevance of the UN to national priorities and the capacity to be responsive to member states. Its outcomes could have a profound and substantial impact on the countries you represent."
A productive dynamic continued as the regional blocks and individual countries delivered their prepared statements to the Co-Chairs. The G77 again raised the issue of conditionality, but this time with a twist: "The gender issues should not be misused to introduce new conditionalities on international development assistance." Carefully scrutinizing every word, my heart leapt when the statement introduced the word "misuse", the implication being that there might be scenario by which a gender reform could be used correctly.
As the hours (yes, three of them) passed, my heart sank, as none of the African ambassadors who indicated to us that they would speak in support of the women's agency did so. Relief came, however, in the form of strong statements about the weaknesses of the UN on gender by Mongolia, Albania, Bangladesh, all including requests for the Secretary General to produce a note presenting his views of how the UN could better deliver on its commitments to gender. Kazakhstan said it best:
"Almost 2 years passed after the report of the High Level Panel on system wide coherence recommended new gender architecture that would be able to bridge the system's gap between policy and implementation and be accountable for the outcome. The panel's proposal to consolidate mandates of OSAGI, DAW and UNIFEM into one entity led by an under-secretary general that would assume full responsibility for strategic planning, normative and operational functions is still a proposal on paper.. While one of the most flashing issues that concerns 50% of the world population is still beyond the secretariat's action. In this regard, my delegation would like to request Secretary General to get finalized the negotiations with members states on the structure and working methods of the Gender entity that would play a leadership role to assist the governments in reaching gender equality worldwide and commence running the entity."
The co-chairs ended the meeting by requesting that Secretary General heed the requests of the member states to produce a report on the UN's work on gender, for discussion by member states in one month's time. Interestingly, no one balked at the fact that gender warranted two consultations, while the funding and governance only got one each. We hoped that our powers of persuasion would compel African ambassadors to suggest that a new women's agency was exactly what was needed to address the weaknesses that would be laid out in the Secretary General's paper. We awaited release of the report, and scheduled another round of meetings with ambassadors.
June 2, 2008
From Rwanda to Zambia: African Ambassadors Take the Lead
Rwanda: From the moment we sat down with the His Excellency Joseph Nsengimana, it became clear that the debate on the women's agency had been fast tracked. Governments like Rwanda, with impressive records on gender equality (Rwanda has more women in Parliament than any other country on the planet) saw the future women's agency as an opportunity to enhance its presence and clout within the UN system. The ambassador was so confident that the women's agency would come to be, that he had submitted CVs of excellent Rwandan candidates for senior posts in the new structure.
Zambia: We heard similar stories from Namibia and Lesotho, and ended the day on a high note during our visit with Ambassador Lazarous Kapambwe. He confirmed that the Swedes had been coordinating an effort to de-link the proposal for the women's agency from the reform package, and also mentioned that there was talk of using women ambassadors as a constituency to move the proposal forward. Finally, he claimed to have called for the "creation of the unit" before the system-wide coherence process even started, and suggested that we lobby key countries willing to make the women's agency the "flagship issue" of the upcoming session of the General Assembly.
June 16, 2008
The Second Informal Consultation on Gender
The report on the state of the UN's work on gender was issued by the Deputy Secretary General on June 5th, and detailed weaknesses in the areas of coordination and coherence, authority and positioning, accountability and resources. It hit all the bases, and laid the groundwork for clear calls for reform which, this time around, the member states took up with what can only be described as gusto.
From Liberia: "Gender equality and Women's Empowerment are key pillars in the quest for peace, stability and economic prosperity. The rights of empowerment of women...are critical building blocks that support the structure of effective statehood. .. It is clear and obvious that we are morally and philosophically bound to new mechanisms on gender equality and women's empowerment."
From Rwanda: "It is in our common interest to strengthen the capacity and effectiveness of the UN's work advancing women's empowerment and gender equality at country level as a matter of priority before the end of the 62nd session [of the General Assembly this September]."
From Benin: "We know how much is still left to be desired in promoting the rights of women. The UN must strengthen its capacity to contribute to solutions. Assistance must become more effective and pressure on states must be more intense and sustained to loosen the grip of traditions that subjugate women. We must without haste, establish the entity that is being proposed. It's urgent that women take their rightful place in the life of nations and achievement of the millennium development goals."
And the co-Chair from Tanzania took his very obvious cue and concluded with the following remark:
"We have heard loud and clear from the membership a strong desire to address effectively the manifest weakness of the UN system in the area of gender equality and women's empowerment. We detect an unmistakable and broad-based momentum in this direction. The co-chairs believe that in light of the foregoing, we are now in a position to ask the Secretary-General, by mid-July, to produce a second paper which would focus on the institutional dimension of gender. The Secretary General could be asked to present, in a non-prescriptive manner, a range of options to help the UN help improve its gender equality and women's empowerment work."
And so the game had changed. We had moved on to brass tacks-an actual structure for the women's agency. We were determined to understand why, suddenly, a resistant, male-dominated institution, had so completely changed its tune on gender reform. So we asked the ambassador from China.
July 9th
From China to Tanzania: The Women's Agency Becomes the Winning Issue
China: We were delighted that Ambassador Liu Zhenmin agreed to meet with us on the very day that he was concerned with important Security Council matters such as the proposed sanctions against the Zimbabwean government after last month's stolen elections (which they would veto).
Considering China's statement at the June 16th Informal Consultation on Gender, we weren't expecting an open embrace of gender reform: "China believes that strengthening the existing institutions and the Inter-agency Working Group on Gender and Women's Empowerment should be considered an option. There is no evidence to show that a new entity will solve these problems."
Sitting on the white leather couches of the Indonesian lounge surrounded by clusters of ambassadors in heated acts of diplomacy, we asked the ambassador, why, suddenly there was so much momentum in support of the women's agency among member states? His response was simple and clear. Of all the reforms brought forward for discussion by the Co-Chairs, Ireland and Tanzania, the proposed women's agency is the "easiest issue they are promoting." He proceeded to explain, quite presciently, that it would not be the governments that would block progress, but the existing agencies focused on women's issues. "Each will want dominance in the new structure."
His analysis did not imply blanket support by China, but it did confirm our suspicion that even the most powerful and sometimes obstinate voices among the member states had come to believe that it was unlikely that the General Assembly would turn their backs on this reform. It would be "easier" to resolve the issue of the women's agency than those related to funding or governance. A decision on this one reform would at least demonstrate modicum of progress in the system-wide coherence process.
Tanzania: Much was revealed about the remarkable progress on the women's agency during our meeting with His Excellency Augustine Mahiga, the ambassador and Co-Chair from Tanzania. He openly shared the intricate, thoughtful and exhaustive strategy that he and Ambassador Kavanagh of Ireland had pursued to promote constructive engagement by member states in the system-wide coherence process, particularly the gender issue. He raised the following key points during our 90 minute meeting.
He and Kavanagh knew that support for the women's agency had to come from the bottom up. They traveled to several developing countries and were able to report back to resistant member states that governments had become impatient with the slow pace of the UN In pushing forward gender policies. It was during their field investigations that they heard the phrase "gender issues are development issues." He believed that given the member states' preoccupation with strengthening the UN's development functions, that this phrase would have lasting resonance and traction.
The Co-Chairs also recognized that while it was okay for gender issues to be development issues, it was distinctly not okay for gender issues to become a Trojan horse for human rights issues. The High Level panel's recommendations related to human rights would most definitely have been taken as conditionalities by member states, so the co-chairs quietly dropped them from the discussion, noting that the Human Rights Council in Geneva was the appropriate body for these issues. According to Mahiga, he could feel the member states breath a "collective a sigh of relief."
Finally, they relied on generosity of the Irish mission to pick up the tab for lunches and coffees with over 90 ambassadors and every single one of the regional blocks. "The circle of people mentioning gender began to widen." The real breakthroughs came, he said, when they appeared to gain the support of India, Mexico and Brazil.
Like the Indian ambassador, the Tanzanian Representative passionately represented the system-wide coherence process as a defining moment to affirm the relevance of the UN.
He concluded our meeting with the following statement. "Resources are dipping for development activities through the UN, but it' convening power is unique and its leveraging power increased if it is efficient, effective and people can trust it." To that, we chimed in, "AIDS-Free World would argue that in light of what the you just said, the UN needs women. "
"That is an understatement," he replied, echoing the chorus of the many male African ambassadors suddenly championing the cause of the world's women from Rwanda to Zambia, "If we have women there, that is where the salvation lies. We are depriving the world of half of its riches."
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
August through September: A Decisive Moment?
As I write, the Secretariat is drafting what has become known among the community of NGOs with whom we have been working to promote the women's agency as "The Options Paper," delineating a range of possible structures for a new UN agency for women. The paper will be released in July and member states will convene, remarkably, for their third discussion on gender equality and women's empowerment in three months. We share in the hope of many of the ambassadors who were kind enough to take time to speak with us, that a resolution on the women's agency will be taken in September.
Of course AIDS-Free World does not support this particular UN reform simply because it's winnable. And of course we believe that women's rights are human rights, and that human rights should be central to every aspect of UN reform. But we vastly prefer the current language coming from member states about gender equality as a moral and ethical imperative, than the language of donor-imposed conditionality. We will try to hold them to their statements.
If come September, the proposal for the women's agency stalls again, AIDS-Free World and our allies in the women's movement will loudly and publicly question whether the UN has the credibility to speak on behalf of women at all. If the proposal pushes through, that is when the work really begins. The time will have come to demonstrate to the honorable co-chair from Tanzania, that indeed, if women are there, that is where the UN's salvation truly lies.
Stay tuned.
|
The Debates 
