IANWGE: Report of the Eleventh Session of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality

The eleventh annual session was chaired by UN Women Executive Director, Ms. Michelle Bachelet. Ms. Lakshmi Puri, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women participated in her capacity as Vice Chair of the Network. IANWGE committed to jointly work towards applying a gender perspective to the deliberations and outcomes of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio + 20) and the Post MDG 2015 Framework. Efforts to promote system-wide accountability for the work on gender equality and the empowerment of women were highlighted as critical to enhance the UN system's effectiveness. The consultation process towards the development of a system-wide action plan on gender equality was praised as sound and useful.
The substantive segments focused on women's political participation, leadership and economic empowerment, as well as the outcome of the Forth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. On the last issue, the Network recognized the need for the implementation of an aid management accountability framework that assesses aid's contributions to advancing the gender equality agenda, in particular at the country level.

The session comprised briefings on various issues, including on CSW56; CEDAW; women and peace and security; violence against women; status of women in the United Nations; options on UN Staff capacity development; and system-wide gender mainstreaming, with a dedicated discussion on the challenges to the incorporation of gender perspectives in the United Nations Risk Reduction Strategy. The work of the IANWGE task forces was reviewed. The task force on Rural Women was repeatedly praised for its work, prepared for the 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. Based on this, IANWGE presented a joint message to CSW.