UN to consider new position for women

Opinion: Boosting representation for women could make a difference.

Donald SteinbergSeptember 7, 2009 09:25Updated May 30, 2010 12:06

A Kenyan Maasai woman receives food rations from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) following prolonged drought at camp in Laikipia, 180 miles east of Nairobi on August 18, 2009. The U.N. is to consider new measures to ensure that women's issues are considered at all levels. (Noor Khamis/GlobalPost)

NEW YORK — The United Nations may soon undergo a shake-up that could affect half the people on the planet.

As the U.N. reviews its internal structures for addressing women's interests around the world, surely the most significant changes expected will concern women and armed conflict. The question is — will this reform make a fundamental difference in the lives of women impacted by war?

Just as the U.N. takes the lead on protecting war-affected children through UNICEF and a high-profile special representative, advocates have looked to the U.N. to protect women from widespread abuse and to ensure their full participation in peace processes, post-conflict reconstruction and governance.

But nearly nine years after the U.N. Security Council passed a groundbreaking resolution to promote such a role, issues such as rape, trafficking, reproductive health and girls’ education continue to receive short shrift.

One culprit is the alphabet soup of U.N. architecture itself. Multiple agencies — the Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Office of the Special Advisor for Gender Issues (OSAGI), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), and others — fight for the same scarce resources with little political power. The offices are filled with talented and dedicated people, but their efforts are thwarted by a system that gives responsibility to all but holds no one accountable. Meanwhile, the two main tasks — ensuring an active field presence for gender proponents in U.N. missions, and mainstreaming gender issues in the work of key U.N. agencies — are largely left wanting. Now, with the broad support of the U.N. secretariat, a coalition of member states, and civil society groups, a new entity — known bureaucratically as the ‘composite entity’ or ‘option D’ — could be approved as early as next month in the U.N. General Assembly. It would bring the principal actors under a single office, headed by a high-profile Under-Secretary-General, and enable greater coordination and synergies. It would also ensure women's issues were at the nexus of U.N. debates, as the new Under-Secretary General would participate in all senior policy-making bodies and serve as a watchdog for the interest of half the world's population.

The proposal enjoys broad support among non-governmental organizations, including 340 groups around the world that are part of the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) campaign. They view this as the best possible outcome in the current environment, in which some member states still ask what all the fuss is about.