UN Women Takes Action Worldwide

Globally

UN Women works in countries around the world to secure women’s rights to own land and property, support initiatives to improve the conditions of women migrant workers, and help governments to incorporate gender perspectives into planning and budgeting frameworks.

Africa

National Poverty Reduction plans are key entry points to address women’s economic needs. In 2008, UNIFEM (now UN Women) partnered with governments in Burundi, Cape Verde, Liberia and Rwanda to integrate a gender perspective into national strategies. In Liberia, UNIFEM (now UN Women) supported consultations that resulted in the inclusion of women’s economic empowerment, leadership, literacy, and ending gender-based violence in the poverty strategy.

In Côte d’Ivoire, the National Survey on the Living Conditions of Households, conducted by the National Institute of Statistics with support from UNIFEM (now UN Women), was the first to integrate a gender dimension in an effort to provide quantitative evidence on specific inequalities faced by women. The household survey covered education, health, agricultural work, security and participation of women, and its results have informed the country’s poverty reduction strategy. For example, to boost gender parity in education, increasing facilities for girls in primary schools along with awareness building for parents is planned. Similarly, support will be provided to self-employment initiatives in agro-industrial settings to reduce women’s unemployment rates.

Asia/Pacific and Arab States

To protect the rights of women migrant workers, UNIFEM (now UN Women) has worked for years in countries of origin and destination in Asia and the Arab States. In Jordan, this resulted in the formulation of a minimum standard contract for migrant women that stipulates their rights, such as the right to medical care, rest days and timely payment of wages. Recruitment agencies from nine Asian countries adopted the Covenant of Ethical Conduct and Good Practices, in which they commit to information campaigns for migrant workers and employers, to social security and insurance programmes that benefit migrant workers and to the establishment of resource and welfare centres in labour-receiving countries.

In Indonesia, UN Women supported the drafting of a local law in the province of Blitar that addresses potential dangers at every step in the recruitment cycle, for example, by emphasizing the need for proper information of women considering work abroad.

Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS

UN Women has worked extensively to foster women’s rights to land and property in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), promoting efforts to ensure that new policies and laws related to land reform empower women and widen their economic opportunities. Particular focus lies on raising the awareness and capacity of rural women as well as local governments through information campaigns and legal counselling.

Training for local courts like the akskals in Kyrgyzstan has enhanced the judges’ understanding of women’s rights in the context of property and inheritance disputes. Advocacy based on the cases in the rural areas has led to the amendment of the law on management of agricultural land that now includes provisions on women’s rights to land within the Kyrgyzstan land management process.

Latin America and the Caribbean

In Bolivia, the Law of Popular Participation established participatory development of local development plans and vigilance committees as two of the main citizenship participation mechanisms at the local level. Supported by UN Women, the Instituto de Formación Femenina Integral (IFFI) of Cochabamba has mobilized and trained members of local women’s organizations to use these opportunities and bring a gender perspective into local public policies, specifically into the municipal budget. Gender-responsive budgeting examines how the allocation of public funds benefits women and men equally; UN Women has supported this approach in more than 40 countries. As a result of IFFI’s advocacy campaign, an article was introduced in the municipal budgetary guidelines, which obliges municipalities to allocate budgetary resources to programmes that promote gender equality and to provide services for women’s victims of violence.