Aspen Ideas Festival, Aspen, Colorado

As we meet here, in Aspen, Colorado, discussing ideas that can change the world, there is another meeting taking place, of far greater import, in Nairobi, Kenya. It’s the International Women’s Summit, the first ever global conference on women and AIDS, sponsored by the World YWCA, comprising 1,500 women activists and a gaggle of UN and political leaders all gathered for the purpose of confronting the appalling feminization of the AIDS pandemic.

The Conference has been going for two days, with a predictable array of issues presented, but the one item that could dramatically change the world for women, especially women struggling with every wrenching aspect of the virus, has yet to be raised in a serious and substantial way: the creation of a new, international United Nations Agency for Women.

And therein lies a developing tale.

Such an agency has never been more desperately needed. Just last month, the Global HIV Prevention Working Group estimated that if prevention initiatives remain as paltry and ineffective in the future as they have been in the past, there would be 60 million new infections by 2015. According to their calculus, that means 36 million of those infections will be in Africa. According to my calculus, even if the ratio of women to men infected remains where it is today (highly unlikely, since the percentage who are women has been rising steadily for years), that will mean an additional 21 to 24 million infections amongst the women of Africa in less than a decade.

Even to contemplate such a prospect is an unmitigated nightmare.

So you would imagine that every effort in the world would be made to prevent such a catastrophe. Indeed, one of the reasons that a High-Level Panel on UN Reform recommended the creation of a new UN Agency for Women was precisely to deal with issues such as AIDS.

Almost exactly two weeks ago, the General Assembly of the United Nations spent an entire morning debating the Panel’s recommendations, specifically focused on the prospect of the new international agency. In the course of that debate, there were several gleams of light and some disconcertingly ominous portents.

In opening the General Assembly session, the Deputy Secretary-General made a superb speech in favour of the agency. Indeed, I can’t recall an occasion when so high-ranking a member of the UN Secretariat has gone so far out on a limb in so principled a fashion on an issue of undoubted controversy. She should be applauded for her leadership. She was absolutely right to do what she did: gender equality is at the heart of the UN Charter, and if the Secretariat can’t take a stand on equality, what is left of its credibility?

The position of the Deputy SG was subsequently endorsed by Germany speaking on behalf of the European Union, and by Sweden speaking on behalf of the Nordics. Support also came from Brazil and a number of other Latin American countries.

But there then emerged a curious cacophony of ambiguity. And one learns in the United Nations, that where there’s ambiguity, there’s almost always opposition. Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the G77 and China and the Non-Aligned Movement, representing most of the world’s poorest countries, indicated that the issue was still under advisement, and Pakistan would let the co-chairs of the meeting know the G77 position ‘in due course’. India followed with an intervention that was a masterful tour de force of equivocation. The United States then joined in, associating itself with some of ‘the pitfalls’ identified by India, and expressing clear reservations of its own.

Taken all in all, we’re clearly in for a battle when it comes to implementing one of the most important proposals to come out of the UN system in at least a generation. It is crucial to remember that the UN’s record on gender, both within its own ranks and in its work around the world, over the last 62 years, ranges from dismal to calamitous. With a new agency, we have the prospect of turning the record around.

So where, one might ask, are the voices of the United Nations agencies? And that brings us right back to Nairobi.

At the opening session of the conference on Wednesday, the Deputy-Secretary General at least alluded to the new agency, even if she didn’t go into detail. But Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, in what was otherwise a very creditable speech, made no reference to the new agency whatsoever. What an extraordinary lost opportunity. Here you are, a co-ordinating body representing ten of the most formidable UN entities, from UNICEF to the World Bank and everything in between, at a conference exclusively devoted to women and AIDS, and there’s not so much as a whisper in the text of the need for the new international agency to play a role in diminishing the carnage of the pandemic for women, or relieving their oppressive burdens of care. How are we to galvanize the countries of the world if the UN agencies are not galvanized? And if there is any existing agency that is not persuaded of the urgency for a new women’s agency, then it’s time that the Deputy Secretary-General, or the Secretary-General himself, stepped in and read the riot act.

And where is the voice of the World Health Organization? The Director General, Dr. Margaret Chan, also addressed the opening session in Nairobi: not a word.

And where is the voice of UNICEF? Here’s an agency for whom the viral war on the women of Africa compromises everything that UNICEF wants to do for children. When will we hear its urgent clamour for support?

And where is the voice of UNDP, the agency ostensibly responsible for women’s issues all these years, whose role, even in the eyes of many of its staff at country level, has been lamentable?

Obviously this recitation can go on ad infinitum. But the point is that the UN agencies have enormous power to influence the public policy of the Member States, and it verges on shameful delinquency for that power not to be exercised. The agencies should be holding meetings with the countries in all of their regional groupings and working methodically, tenaciously, indefatigably, at rounding up support for the new agency proposal.

There’s a difficult question lurking behind all of this, but it must be asked: why are the UN agencies so loathe to act, so slow to comment? I remember back to my days in the mid-1990’s, as Deputy at UNICEF, and UNAIDS was created … the reaction was fascinating: everyone was anxious about the possibility of our funding being siphoned away. It was absurd of course; what actually happened was that additional funding was generated. But is it possible that the same fear of losing dollars lies behind the inexplicable passivity of the agencies? Or is it even worse than that? Are the agencies determined to insist that they’ve actually been doing the job on gender all along, and if a new Women’s Agency emerges, then somehow their exemplary work will be lost? That would really take one’s breath away. After all, one of the basic rationales for the recommendation of a new agency, was the failure of the UN system to adequately advance the situation of women.  In the words of the Panel: “The message is clear: While the UN remains a key actor in supporting countries to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, there is a strong sense that the UN system’s contribution has been incoherent, under-resourced and fragmented.”

Let’s not forget what we’re dealing with. A notable, High-Level Panel on UN reform, consisting of fifteen eminent personalities, so High-Level as to include the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, recommended the creation of a United Nations Agency for Women. It would fold in the various existing UN entities dealing with women; it would be led by an Under Secretary General chosen through a global search; it would address both normative and operational issues; it would be well-funded (many are arguing for an initial annual budget of a billion dollars); and it would have programmatic capacity at country level. This country level capacity would allow the new agency to give significant grants to the struggling groups of women activists to fight for change.

In the context of the UN, a Women’s Agency, on a par with all the other major agencies, is a revolutionary proposition. It has the support of women activists the world over. If it happens, it could transform the lives of women in countries around the globe. Nothing would escape its notice. And it could use its newfound power to launch a collaborative assault on the AIDS virus that would result in the saving of untold numbers of lives.

Surely that’s good enough for the UN agencies.

So when will they join the fray?

** Stephen Lewis spoke in his capacity as Co-Director of AIDS-Free World, a new US-based international AIDS advocacy organization. He is also Chair of the Board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation and former United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

---

Bookmark this article with any of these social bookmarking sites: