Proposed UN agency `dramatic step forward' for women
By Olivia Ward

November 10, 2006 - (Toronto Star) A landmark proposal for creating a powerful new United Nations women's agency moved a giant step closer to reality yesterday, with the endorsement of a high-level panel on reforming the sprawling UN system.

"This is the most dramatic step forward in decades, for women and for the UN," said Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy on AIDS/HIV, who has lobbied vigorously for an agency that would deliver programs and services to billions of women throughout the world on an unprecedented scale.

"It holds the prospect of transforming the lives of women — removing the worst poverty and oppression, saving lives in the midst of the AIDS pandemic and other massive health problems," said Lewis, who leaves his job at the end of December, but will continue to promote the new body.

Its creation is part of a series of recommendations tabled yesterday by the panel, which was appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is expected to ask the 192-country General Assembly to adopt it before his term ends Dec. 31.

"I am more than optimistic," said Ruth Jacoby, director-general of the Swedish foreign ministry's development corporation, and a panel member. "This is as close to victory as you can get." The panel's report was a sweeping attempt to strengthen and better co-ordinate the UN's work in development, the environment and humanitarian aid, streamlining a six-decade-old organization many say is in need of radical change.

The panel's 15 members were drawn from senior international politicians and officials including British finance minister Gordon Brown, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, as well as Robert Greenhill, president of the Canadian International Development Agency. Its recommendations on women were the result of a year-long lobbying process by more than 90 international advocacy groups.

At the UN yesterday women's groups said Canada and other countries that backed the project should take the lead in fund-raising to get if off the ground. The current budget for women's issues is scanty, and split among a small development fund, UNIFEM, a division for the advancement of women, and the office of a special adviser on gender issues.

Women's advocates have run up against stiff opposition from donors opposed to budget expansion. But in the future, the report said, "three existing UN entities ... will be consolidated into one enhanced and independent gender entity." It would have a stronger role in establishing principles for women's rights and equality. It would also be "fully and ambitiously funded," a key point for campaigners who point to the $2 billion budget of the children's agency, UNICEF.

They aim to raise at least half of that for the new agency. The UN system now embraces some 17 specialized agencies and organizations, 14 funds and programs and 17 secretariat departments and offices. The panel's report called for consolidation to eliminate waste and duplication. The new women's body would be headed for the first time by an undersecretary-general — a top ranking official with the clout to lobby for money, make decisions and plan wide-ranging programs for women.

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