A United Nations Reform that delivers for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment
Source: UNIFEM

I. Building the Case
The case for strengthening the UN operational system's structures and services to support countries to achieve gender equality and women's empowerment has grown increasingly stronger in the past year.
The global consensus on the centrality of gender equality has been reaffirmed…

* The outcome document from the Millennium Summit five-year review is unswerving in its recognition of gender equality and women's empowerment as key to all development goals.

The UN's comparative advantage in this area is acknowledged…
* The UN's value and relevance at the country level stands to gain a great deal from the leadership it demonstrates in supporting national priorities, strategies and multi-stakeholder partnerships for gender equality. There is, perhaps, no single other development assistance actor that can provide support in this area that has the weight of normative agreements behind them and is perceived as being relatively free from specific national or political agendas.
UN reform is driven by a commitment to achieving a strategic and coherent model, with both programme and donor countries calling for a UNCT that can help countries accelerate progress on the MDGs…

* The advantages of a coordinated, focused UN Country Team are well recognized, albeit, still elusive. If support to achievement of the MDGs is a measure of the UNCT's performance, the composition of this team will require robust, high-level participation of gender equality experts. This will require significant additional investment by the UN in fielding such expertise to each UNCT.

At the same time, the challenges to strengthening UNCT performance on gender equality have also been increasingly documented. Inadequate attention to implementation, resource allocations and accountability for gender equality - especially in areas beyond health and education - continue to hamper progress in achieving the MDGs.

To date, UNCT or UN organization performance on gender equality depends, somewhat haphazardly, on individual rather than institutional commitment…
* The performance of the larger UN organizations and UN Country Teams is uneven. Progress has been made, with nearly every UN organization, for instance, now having a gender policy or action plan. But evaluations of UN organizations over the past 10 years have consistently demonstrated inadequate leadership and/or staff commitment to allocate core resources; internal conceptual confusion about gender equality as a goal and gender mainstreaming as a strategy despite considerable investment in training; and a failure to institutionalize accountability for gender equality in results-based management, evaluation, audit and performance systems.

I. The aid effectiveness agenda lacks accountability mechanisms for gender equality…
* Recent reviews of country-level coordination and policy frameworks - such as PRSPs, MDGs, and UNDAFs - have demonstrated an improvement in attention to gender equality and women's empowerment in the analytical components and increased inclusion of these in the results frameworks. But significant gaps remain in both implementation, allocation of resources and monitoring and evaluation. There is little evidence of systematic attempts by UNCTs to involve governmental or non-governmental gender equality and women's rights advocates in consultative or decision-making processes. As such, women's "voice" runs the risk of being lost in the aid effectiveness agenda, including in country-level discussions about priorities for investing increasing aid flows.

The "architecture" that supports work on gender equality - gender units, gender focal points, DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM - is fragmented and inadequately positioned…
* A UNIFEM-UNDP study in 2002 identified nearly 1,300 staff in the multilateral system with gender equality in their TORs. The majority of these - approximately 1,000 - are "gender focal points", comprising primarily junior staff with little experience in gender equality or access to decision-making. The numbers, however, create an impression of significant activity.

II. Criteria for achieving a UN operational system to support countries to achieve gender equality and women's empowerment

* Coordination, premised on the rationale that a unified approach to supporting gender equality that builds on the comparative advantage of each part of the system will reduce transaction costs and increase the quality and level of assistance offered by the UNCTs to countries.
* National Capacities, by vastly expanding the existence of gender equality expertise in UNCTs and ensuring that this is linked to existing gender equality expertise in programme countries.
* Cost Effectiveness, by reducing transaction costs for programme countries and eliminating a 'window-dressing' approach to taking action on gender equality.
* Response rates, by ensuring that strong voice for women's rights can apply pressure on the system to respond immediately to violations and by making gender equality expertise more easily accessible.
* Involvement of diverse voices, through greater participation of women's rights organizations - both governmental and non-governmental, and including advocacy and grassroots groups - in advisory and consultative bodies and as implementing partners of a more coherent and effective UN at national, regional and global levels. Such participation would enhance the 'voice' of gender equality and women's rights advocates within and outside of the system.
* A continued ability to innovate. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of all, but remains an essential part of work on gender equality. A reformed UN and structure for gender equality must allow space for innovation and pushing the envelope beyond accepted action to ensure that issues like ending violence against women move from the private to the public domain.

III. Messages
1. A UN reform can be good for gender equality. It is an opportunity to ensure that the reformed UN system can deliver better for women. Like the MDGs, promoting gender equality and women's empowerment should be both a goal of UN reform in its own right and central to all other aspects of UN reform.
2. The idea of "one UN" - particularly at the country level - is a desirable goal if it: i) reduces tensions and ambiguities amongst UN organizations; ii) builds on the comparative advantage of each UN organization; iii) strengthens coordination, support and resources for - as well as progress toward - gender equality; iv) hinges on a Resident Coordinator system that is enabling and rights-based rather than one that consolidates power and control on the basis of hierarchies rather than competencies.
3. The current institutional arrangements for support to gender equality in the operational system - and the gaps between the operational and normative system - tend to marginalize and fragment rather than strengthen action on women's rights and gender equality. UN reform should address this.
4. With regard to how UN reform can strengthen action, this depends on what shape UN reform takes. There have been a variety of proposals: one powerful women's agency bringing together the four women specific entities on the normative and operational side of the UN system; a strong operational agency like a UNICEF for women; a UN partnership for gender equality and women's advancement modeled on the way the UN addresses the issue of HIV/AIDS; a strengthened UNIFEM within UNDP/UNDG; and others. The organizational structures for gender equality need to be aligned with the larger reform decisions. However, the criteria should be that gender equality and women's empowerment receive adequate resources, status and authority in a re-aligned UN that are commensurate with the resources and position that other critical issues receive. This is the only way to address the current fragmentation when it comes to gender equality and women's empowerment, and the only way to ensure that a powerhouse drives the mainstreaming agenda throughout the system.

Notes
1. Beck, Tony, Review of UNDG Members' Gender Mainstreaming Accountability Mechanisms (2006), commissioned by the UNDG Task Force on Gender Equality.

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