Julia Greenberg
2 December 2008
opinion
In September of this year, UN member states passed a resolution to move swiftly to create a new UN agency for women, a move, packaged with a series of reforms on governance and funding, that they hope will result in renewed public faith in the UN system. Julia Greenberg, AIDS-Free World's associate director, tells the inside story behind the sudden groundswell in support for the new women's agency and why the global community of women living with, and affected by HIV/AIDS, should care.
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 HIV/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 onto 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 mobilisation 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 programmes (the combined annual budgets for all of the UN agencies concerned with gender totalled US$65 million in 2006, while UNICEF's budget was US$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 the 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 programmes, that have been imposed upon them by the World Bank and the IMF. While we did not (and would never) play down the impact of this damaging legacy, we bridled at the contention of 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 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, Ban Ki-moon, 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 recognised that they had to significantly narrow the scope of the High Level Panel's 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.
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 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.
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 at 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 again heard 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.
THE FIRST INFORMAL CONSULTATION ON GENDER - 16 MAY 2008
On the 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 G77 again raised the issue that 'The gender issues should not be misused to introduce new conditionalities on international development assistance.' Carefully scrutinising 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.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
