June 17, 2008

In response to the request of Member States, the United Nations General Assembly convened informal consultations on gender to hear the opinion of state governments on Gender Equality Architecture within the United Nations.

The first session took place on 16 May 2008 and focused on the gender programmatic aspects: meaning the actions undertaken on this issue. During the General Assembly session, there was consensus on the importance of the UN work towards gender equality, taking into account the existing wide gap between the design of the policies and their implementation. Many of the Member States that participated (many of them represented by their ambassadors) requested that the Secretary General elaborate a document on how to bridge these gaps and move forward in the search of a solution.

The main gaps noted by the Member States were: the lack of resources, responsibility, power, coherence and leadership.

Later, on 6 June 2008, the Deputy Secretary General sent a note (1) to the States to be presented to the president of the General Assembly and for future consideration in the round of consultations on gender to be held 16 June 2008.

The DAWN network has pronounced on this note, while also acknowledging the importance of the participation of G77 countries on some of the points that move forward on the gender agenda.

From DAWN

June 14, 2008

Dear All,

We at DAWN have looked closely at the DSG's new note on substantive and programmatic aspects and here are our comments:

1. The note is a response to serious demands from a number of g77 countries that are very concerned to ensure that the new entity be a substantive one that will be able to tackle the real challenges within countries. They are also concerned to make sure that the entity is properly funded with additionality, not just shuffling money around – this issue is of course raised only lightly in the DSG's note but that is ok at this stage.

2. Substantively, the note is a significant improvement on the first note from last fall, in that it does focus on coherence, positioning, authority and a broad issue of resources for in-country work. In this regard, the note does not say anything new and different that we don't already know, but it is important that it has now put these issues formally on the table with the weight of the DSG behind them. This is a major improvement over the situation last fall when we had much weaker input from the DSG's office.

3. There are still some weaknesses however – the monitoring role for gender equality across the system needs to be more clearly specified (how will this be ensured?); the need to expand country presence is not mentioned at all.

4. We concur therefore with the suggestion that we should welcome the note from this perspective, and recognize the value of its analysis.

5. We also agree that we should ask for models and mechanisms, but we need to specify what we are looking for – a well defined entity with a clear mandate to be THE system's champion and watchdog body for gender equality without diminishing responsibility for mainstreaming by all UN bodies; high level placement and authority both for the system as a whole and within countries to ensure effectiveness; country presence needs to cover all countries; and a commitment to the level of resources that would be essential to ensure this – we should be pushing for a $ 1 billion budget.

Hope this is useful for your lobbying. Please do recognize the positive role played by G77 countries in holding out for a more effective entity.

Best to all,

Gigi Francisco for DAWN

(1) Note of the Deputy Secretary General "Note on the United Nations system support to member states on gender equality and women's empowerment" 5 June 2008, PDF format.