What challenges does UN reform present to women?
By Kathambi Kinoti

April 7, 2006 - (AWID) 'It is right and indeed necessary that women should be engaged in decision-making processes in all areas, with equal strength and in equal numbers.' These are the words of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in his speech to mark this year's International Women's Day which was celebrated on March 8. The sentiments are not unusual, coming from the head of the global organization that has midwifed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention against the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and even the amplification of the assertion that women's rights are human rights.

For a number of years the United Nations has been planning and implementing reforms to improve its effectiveness. On March 15 this year the United Nations General Assembly voted to create a new Human Rights Council to replace the Commission for Human Rights. The Commission had the reputation of being politicized and protecting some member countries from the scrutiny of their human rights records. The establishment of a Peace Building Commission and a High Level Coherence Panel on Environment, Development and Humanitarian Assistance are also part of the ongoing reform effort.

However, current initiatives to reform the UN have women wondering if the organization is not merely paying lip service to the principle of gender equality. The fact that only three of the 15 members of the Coherence Panel are women lends credence to this suspicion. Two hundred and forty women from all over the world who attended this year's UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) sent an open letter to the UN expressing their discontent:
'We are disappointed and frankly outraged that gender equality and strengthening the women's machineries within the UN system are barely noted, and are not addressed as a central part of the reform agenda. Again, we must ask how it can be that more than ten years after the commitment to gender parity at the Beijing Conference, the UN is still offering only token representation of women on critical committees, high level expert panels and in senior positions within the organization.' [1]

According to refugee rights expert Michael Kagan, ongoing initiatives are attempting to address two types of reforms: 'The first are essentially constitutional changes to the General Assembly, Security Council and Human Rights Commission intended to better harness whatever political will exists on the part of member states. The second are improvements in oversight and management of the executive agencies, aimed mainly at improving personnel and preventing financial scandals.' [2] He argues that these are just two of what should be a three-legged stool. The missing leg represents mechanisms of accountability that would be accessible to the people who depend on UN agencies the most. Kagan says that in East African refugee camps that are de facto governed by the UN, its refugee agency the UNHCR has empowered traditional dispute resolution mechanisms that have imprisoned women for adultery and entrenched female genital mutilation. In Pakistan they 'forced women to receive assistance through either their father or their husband; [women] cannot be registered as Palestinian refugees in their own right, and cannot pass on the status to their children.' [3]

A parallel event at the recent CSW [4] discussed these and other challenges that the UN reform initiatives may give rise to, some of which are the following:

1. The UN seems to have adopted the route for economic development espoused by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization. According to Liane Schalatek of the Heinrich Boll Foundation, this route touts trade, investment and aid (in that order) as the best path to development and only after developing countries themselves have put their own economic houses in order by implementing the principles of 'good governance.' She says that this approach leaves no room for a systemic critique approach or for a human and women's rights-centred development concept. ECOSOC reform should strengthen the interlinkages between development, peace, security and human rights, but these may be weakened by the development vision of the organizations of global economic governance.

2. Some aspects of the UN reform process are strongly driven by the United States of America, a country whose administration has undermined the women's rights agenda within the UN.

3. Development funding by UN agencies such as UNIFEM will go to governments rather than non-governmental agencies and this could adversely affect women particularly in countries that are not committed to gender equality. However the fact that civil society organizations are important actors in ensuring government accountability may mean that the UN will still have to engage with them.

4. According to Vina Nadjibullah of UNIFEM, the recently established Peace Building Commission (PBC) will provide a coordinated, coherent and integrated approach to post-conflict peace building. Indeed Security Council Resolution 1325 recognized the crucial role that women play in
peace processes and called for their full participation in peacemaking, peace building and peacekeeping. However the PBC, which is an advisory body to the Security Council, has little enforcement power and its mandate does not take into account the full spectrum of issues related to the women-peace-security nexus.

5. The new Human Rights Council does not provide room for strong NGO participation. The Commission for Human Rights did bring about some important gains for women's rights and Cynthia Rothschild of the Center for Women's Global Leadership says that the notion that the Commission has been 'discredited' may do a disservice to the gains made. Women's groups will therefore need to be vigilant in ensuring that the limiting of civil society participation is reviewed and the system of special rapporteurs is retained.

6. Mavic Cabrera-Balleza of the International Women's Tribune Centre says that there is a disconnect between global policies and advocates at the national level. The lack of awareness amongst civil society about UN reform means that potentially powerful global policies like Resolution 1325 could be meaningless to women at the national and community levels. There is therefore a need for more information to flow both from the UN and from NGOs who have access to the information to other civil society groups.

Apart from the reforms already being implemented, some people are calling for a new women's agency to be formed within the UN. Notable among these is Stephen Lewis the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa who says: 'The only thing that will give adequate voice to the women of the world is an international women's agency of clout and power.' UNIFEM, which is part of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is limited in many ways, including in budgetary allocations.

UN reform has the potential to greatly improve the promotion and protection of women's rights. However in view of the demonstrated lack of commitment to gender equality within the organization, women's rights advocates will have their work cut out for them in ensuring that this potential is realized.

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