Give women's issues stronger UN profile

July 9, 2006 (Toronto Star)- The United Nations is facing a sea change in coming months as Secretary-General Kofi Annan prepares to step down.
To focus the global agenda for his successor, a UN panel is studying ways to make its far-reaching development, humanitarian and environment programs more coherent. And Stephen Lewis, the high-profile Canadian who serves as Annan's tireless AIDS envoy to Africa, is taking the opportunity to push women's issues to the very top of that rethink.

This past week, Lewis made an impassioned plea to the UN to use a fraction of its $20 billion budget to create a new International Agency for Women with the mandate, expertise and funding to champion women's rights, health and security.

That plea is overdue. After 40 years of the women's movement, and lip service paid to women's issues, the reality is a disgrace in much of the world.
The UN knows how important empowering women is in the struggle to eradicate poverty, improve health care and bring social progress. Progressive aid agencies are channelling more of their help through women, knowing that is the fastest way to make a difference.

Yet consider these statistics:
* Some 70 per cent of the world's poor are women.
* Up to 3 million women a year die of gender-based violence or neglect while 600,000 die in childbirth, many from lack of simple sanitation.
* Women account for almost half of all HIV/AIDS cases worldwide. In Africa, it climbs to close to 70 per cent.

Moreover, even the UN's own record on women is nothing to crow about. It has failed to reach its own target of employing 50 per cent women in most of its agencies and departments. Even the special UN panel that is looking into wholesale reform is sadly lopsided, with 12 men and three women.
Given that record, why might Lewis think that a new international agency for women would be more than a sop that will "tinker at the edges of `gender architecture' and consign the world of women, yet again, to perpetual second-rate status," as he himself puts it?

Lewis admits he has struggled with that question. And he was sobered by the "tremendous skepticism" expressed by many women on the same issue.
But he insists such an agency could be different, if it is set up properly, equipped with a $1 billion budget, and supplied with field staff in every country.
At the moment, the women's components of various UN agencies, including the UN development fund for women and the division for the advancement of women, get only $74 million out of the organization's $20 billion budget.

The new agency could give non-governmental organizations and community-based women's groups the support their voices and ideas have never had, he says. The idea would be "to whip the UN family into shape, to bring substance and know-how to the business of gender mainstreaming, to involve women in every facet of life from development and trade to culture to peace and security, to lobby vociferously and indefatigably for every aspect of gender equality."
His model is UNICEF, the UN children's agency which has effectively defended the rights of young people.

The UN's response to Lewis's appeal has been less than encouraging. Only three of the 12 members of the reform panel turned up to hear him. Those who did urged him to flesh out his ideas. He has taken on that challenge and hopes to present a more detailed plan soon.
Whatever the outcome of Lewis's efforts, the UN has a moral duty to push women's issues far higher up the agenda. Countless lives ride on the outcome.

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