Speech
UNIFEM Statement at the 2009 Annual Session of the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board
By Executive Director Inés Alberdi, Deputy Executive Director Moez Doraid, UNIFEM
Date: 28 May 2009
Occasion: UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board Meeting, 2009 Annual Session
[Check against delivery.]
Mr. President, Members of the Executive Board, Colleagues and Friends,
I want to thank Helen Clark, the new Administrator of UNDP and Chair of the UN Development Group, for her kind introduction. On behalf of UNIFEM I also want to express our appreciation to the Secretary-General for appointing the first woman leader of the UN development agency. We know, from our work with her when she was Prime Minister of New Zealand, that her commitment and vision for social and gender justice is unparalleled.
I am pleased to provide this first report on the implementation of the UNIFEM Strategic Plan 2008-2011. I will focus on four elements: the contextual factors that influence implementation; progress towards supporting countries to achieve development results for gender equality; achievements and gaps in UNIFEM performance to support countries and UN system partners to advance gender equality; and an update on its integrated financial resource framework.
Introduction
The year 2008 marked the mid-term of national and global efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The Accra Action Agenda and the Doha Declaration were agreed as frameworks for development partnerships and financing development. The Security Council agreed to resolution 1820, recognizing threats to women’s security as a concern for national and international security. And Member State discussions on strengthening the institutional framework in support of gender equality in the United Nations advanced in important ways.
By last fall, however, it was clear that the global economic and financial crisis would have reverberating impacts in most, if not all, of our partner countries. Coming on top of the food and energy crises, it has seriously challenged conventional approaches to development — including key assumptions underlying the aid effectiveness and financing for development agendas. Like previous financial crises, this one will have different and serious consequences for the lives and livelihoods of women and girls, particularly those most excluded.
For this reason I appeal to all countries to ensure that, particularly in this context, investments in gender equality and women’s empowerment continue to grow. If they do not, the long-term effects on communities and families will endure long after economies begin to show signs of recovery. There is no quick fix for achieving gender equality, but there are effective long-term solutions. We see this clearly, for example, in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan where long-term initiatives with Imams and villages leaders on women’s land rights are generating concrete results for thousands of women, particularly widows and poor rural women, who now have formal title and can ensure greater food security for their families. Such initiatives must be sustained.
The programmes UNIFEM supports to assist partners to change the options and opportunities for women home-based workers, for indigenous women and other ethnic minorities, for HIV-positive women, for migrant women and women informal cross-border traders, for rural women, women with disabilities, women survivors of violence and conflict are assuming a high priority.
In this context, the focus of the UNIFEM Strategic Plan 2008-2011, approved by this Executive Board last year is critically important. Its overall goal is one that emphasizes implementation of commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment at national level. Through its innovative and catalytic programming and its technical expertise, it is this focus on implementation and accountability that UNIFEM seeks to strengthen through enhancing capacities and coordination with governments, UN organizations, and civil society organizations, including women’s networks and NGOs.
Progress on the Development Results Framework
The Development Results Framework of UNIFEM’s Strategic Plan is framed by four goal-level thematic areas and eight outcome-level results. The thematic areas are enhancing women’s economic security and rights, ending violence against women, halting the spread of HIV and AIDS among women and girls; and advancing gender justice in democratic governance.
The eight outcome-level results represent a holistic effort to support countries to implement commitments to gender equality. The first four focus on supporting partners to enhance the gender responsiveness of the normative environment; the next three support strengthened institutional capacity to advance implementation and accountability; and the final result enables development of model programmes that generate credible evidence on the “how to” of achieving gender equality that can be replicated and upscaled by national and UN partners.
Let me briefly review some highlights of progress in each of the four thematic areas.
Enhancing Women’s Economic Security and Rights
In terms of enhancing women’s economic security and rights, UNIFEM supported partners to make important progress in three areas: mainstreaming gender equality in national development strategies; significantly expanding capacity and partnerships to undertake gender responsive budgeting; and advancing workable models to improve women’s livelihood options.
The Accra Action Agenda and the Doha Declaration affirming gender equality and social inclusion as essential to achieving development results, remain important reference points for UNIFEM work in this area. The Doha affirmation of gender equality as critical to economic growth, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability, and commitment to end gender discrimination in labour and financial markets, recognize women economic agents. UNIFEM’s partnerships with the European Union, the International Training Centre of the ILO, the OECD, the UNDG and a wide range of women’s networks from both North and South has also contributed to increasing stakeholder demand for an inclusive approach to development that incorporates gender equality considerations in all sectors of the economy.
The importance that these frameworks have taken on at national level makes investments in mainstreaming gender equality in national, regional and global development frameworks essential. UNIFEM supported successful efforts in this regard in 20 national, regional and global development strategies, resulting in strategies that reiterated the importance of supporting women’s livelihoods, ending violence against women, and guaranteeing the rights of rural women to land. Vastly expanding capacity in applying gender-responsive budgeting — especially in the context of public financial management reform — has also taken an even higher priority and UNIFEM is now providing support in 45 countries. Importantly, our partnerships in this area are also expanding, including with UNFPA, UNCDF and UNDP.
Our partnership with the World Bank on piloting results-based initiatives on women’s economic empowerment in six countries has now entered its second year and is beginning to show interesting results. A model that we are testing in Egypt — which replicates an innovative initiative in Mexico — brings 18 private sector companies together to agree on standards for ending discrimination and advancing gender equality. In addition, two firms, one with over 10,000 employees have made sufficient progress to receive a seal of certification in gender equality from the Ministry of Investment.
Ending Violence against Women
While concrete data on the gender-differentiated impacts of the crises are needed, there is justifiable concern that the widespread loss of jobs and livelihoods in countries will increase threats to women’s personal security and exacerbate violence against women and girls. In 2008, UNIFEM supported progress in 44 countries on finalizing laws, policies and strategies to end violence against women. In the context of the Secretary General’s UNiTE to End Violence campaign, we are working closely with UN partners and strengthening efforts to involve men, boys and young women, as well as on effective approaches to prevention.
UNIFEM is also supporting countries to implement innovative models with distinct communities. In 2008, for instance, UNIFEM and UN-Habitat together laid the basis for an expanded programme that was originally supported by the United Nations Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women, assisting local governments, community and women’s groups to work together to create ‘Safe Cities’ in urban neighborhoods. In rural areas, we strengthened our work with indigenous communities to inform both women and men of their human rights to live free of violence, including gender-based violence. For instance, in Bolivia and Ecuador, we supported indigenous communities to launch training on access to legal assistance for both men and women. Women are now better informed about their rights and the legal and paralegal options available to them in obtaining better protection and response.
Halting the Spread of HIV/AIDS among Women and Girls
To promote a coherent, gender-sensitive approach to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, UNIFEM works in collaboration with the UN system, national AIDS councils and civil society partners, prioritizing support to HIV-positive women’s networks to advocate for gender-sensitive responses and to address the links between HIV/AIDS and violence against women.
As budgets for health and social services are increasingly constrained by the economic crisis, women’s care-giving burden may greatly increase, along with their unmet need for prevention and treatment. UNIFEM focused on supporting women affected and infected by HIV — especially HIV positive women’s networks — to gain access to the venues in which national AIDS plans are being formulated so that their views and priorities would be included. This work is key to reaching the Millennium Development Goal on HIV/AIDS, as it provides first-hand experience in shaping gender-responsive HIV/AIDS policies and programmes. In 2008, UNIFEM supported HIV-positive women’s networks and groups to articulate an agenda and call for government action in Burundi, Ghana, India, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
Advancing Gender Justice in Democratic Governance
Good governance is recognized as an important component of sustainable development and aid effectiveness, as well as endurable peace. Governance reforms that respond to the economic and financial crisis will have a different impact on women and girls. This can be seen already in high and middle income countries, as decisions are taken about the precise mixture of stimulus spending and tax cuts, which may also result in cuts in public services.
UNIFEM focused on increasing women’s participation in political decision making positions, strengthening women’s capacity to run for electoral office and mobilize constituencies to advance women’s rights. In Rwanda for example, where 56 percent of those elected to parliament in September were women, UNIFEM supported training on electoral processes for 113 female representatives from all parties, covering manifesto development, competitive political discourse, laws, economic policies and confidence building.
In 2008 UNIFEM worked with national women machineries, gender equality advocates, UN country teams and government partners to: secure incorporation of commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment in the post-conflict strategies of five countries; support passage of 27 laws or policies strengthening women’s participation in democratic governance; assist four countries to implement the concluding comments of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women; support justice system reforms in five countries; and increase resources for gender equality in crisis and post-conflict situations.
UNIFEM supported women’s networks to advocate for inclusion of gender equality priorities in post-conflict reconstruction needs assessments and planning in five countries in 2008, including the final Burundi peacebuilding strategy; the joint needs assessment for Georgia; and, in Morocco, the Human Rights Consultative Council action plan for follow-up on the implementation of the recommendations of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission.
UNIFEM also works with UN system partners to enhance capacities to implement Security Council resolutions 1325 and 1820. The adoption of Security Council resolution 1820 on sexual violence in conflict gave impetus to all of our work, particularly the 12-member UN inter-agency initiative that UNIFEM hosts: UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict Situations. In partnership with DPKO, UN Action and the Governments of the UK and Canada, UNIFEM convened a Wilton Park Conference to consider an inventory of innovative practices of uniformed peacekeepers in preventing widespread and systematic sexual violence. This helped to inform the thinking of the UN and other organizations about concrete and actionable changes in procedures that will minimize the risk of sexual violence that women and girls face.
UNIFEM has been generating data to form a better basis for monitoring implementation of Security Council resolutions 1325 and 1820. Preliminary findings show that women represent fewer than 2 percent of signatories of peace agreements and only 7 percent of negotiators since 2000, even though resolution 1325, explicitly asks for an increase in numbers of women in peace talks. Our analysis of emergency and post-conflict spending patterns shows that just 2 percent of post-conflict budgets target women’s empowerment or gender equality or addresses sexual violence. And just 8 per cent of the proposed budgets in eight post-conflict needs assessments have an indicator on women’s issues or gender equality concerns.
These data shape UNIFEM initiatives in this area, including advocacy for stronger performance by the UN system. UNIFEM facilitated women’s groups to develop common agendas to influence peace processes in Burundi, Darfur, Guatemala, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Uganda Women’s Peace Coalition developed women’s implementation protocols on key components of the peace agreement to advocate with the Mediation Secretariat, Government and Lord’s Resistance Army delegations. UNIFEM provision, in partnership with DPA of a gender advisor to the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to the Lord’s Resistance Army-Affected Area assisted in expanding women’s participation and securing stronger commitments to women’s rights.
Gaps and Challenges: The Development Results Framework
The gaps and challenges UNIFEM encountered in the first year of implementing its Strategic Plan guide future areas of work. UNIFEM will explore agreed standards on what constitutes a national development strategy that is ‘fully aligned’ with gender equality commitments, as well as approaches to costing gender equality in national development strategies. Strengthening capacity to use gender-responsive budgeting and indicators to monitor implementation of national development plans is also a high priority.
UNIFEM is building a knowledge-management platform to provide state-of-the-art information derived from global experts as well as UNIFEM programme experience to end violence against women. We are also working with the inter-agency programme appraisal committee of the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women to strengthen its evaluation capacity and will finalize a major evaluation of the Trust Fund in the first six months of 2009.
In the area of governance, peace and security, UNIFEM continues to work closely with UNDP, DPKO and DPA on many fronts, including on mainstreaming gender equality into transitional justice processes, peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction plans.
Executive Board members may have noted that expenditures on HIV and AIDS reflect the limited resources available to respond to requests for support. Let me be clear that this in no way is a reflection of our commitment, the extent of work we are undertaking, or progress towards results. Much of our work in this area focuses on contributing technical expertise to inter-agency initiatives, including through a strong partnership with UNAIDS and, in particular, with UNDP. As such, expenditures on programming are limited. A major factor that has constrained resource mobilization is that UNIFEM has not been a UNAIDS co-sponsor. In 2009, we are taking steps to expand our partnership with UNAIDS with a view to co-sponsorship in the near future.
Managing for Results
The Management Results Framework guides UNIFEM in assessing its performance on delivering results. It is comprised of four output-level results: policy advice and catalytic programming; UN coordination and reform; accountability, risk and oversight; administrative, human and financial capacities. While the report details results in each of these areas, I would like to call attention to results on three: policy advice, UN coordination and accountability.
Two UNIFEM policy and advocacy initiatives that generated important returns in 2008 were its management of the Say No to Violence campaign, as an initiative of the Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence campaign and its launch of Progress of the World’s Women 2008-09. Last November, more than 5 million signatures to the Say No campaign were delivered to the Secretary-General, including those of 29 Heads of State and 188 ministers. Progress of the World’s Women — which provides informed analysis and evidence that delivery of services to support women’s empowerment is the litmus test of accountability for gender equality — is providing a stronger substantive foundation for the UNIFEM and UN system programmes in support of gender equality in the context of the Millennium Development Goals.
The 2004 Triennial Comprehensive Policy Review of operational activities, reiterated in 2007, called upon the UN system to “avail itself of UNIFEM’s technical experience on gender issues,” and encouraged UNIFEM to strengthen its efforts to provide strategic guidance to the UN system on gender equality. In 2008 UNIFEM expanded its participation in coordination and reform processes at all levels, engaging in 72 joint programmes, 18 as the lead agency. UNIFEM took a leadership role in 32 gender theme groups at the global, regional, and country levels; co-chaired an additional 19; and was an active team member in another seven.
UNIFEM is contributing to mainstreaming gender equality in all of the ‘One UN’ pilots, and in 2008 — in its role as chair of the UNDG task team on gender equality — collaborated with the Resident Coordinator in Viet Nam to convene gender equality experts from all One UN pilots for stocktaking. Their recommendations were presented to and endorsed by the full UNDG.
As chair of the UNDG task team, UNIFEM worked with 17 UN organizations to finalize an agreed set of performance indicators on gender equality for UN country teams, which was endorsed by the UNDG in 2008 and distributed by the Chair to all resident coordinators. The preliminary 2008 stocktaking report on the One UN pilots noted that implementation of the performance indicators on gender equality with the active guidance of UNIFEM and support of the UNCT has been a positive step towards the mainstreaming of gender in the UN’s operations at the country level. Through implementing the scorecard, UNCTs are more aware of their own performance on gender and thus better positioned to improve their support to national partners.
UNIFEM also prioritized support to UN system-wide efforts, participating in the inter-agency task force convened by the Deputy Secretary-General on gender equality in the context of system-wide coherence, the Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign and the rule of law working group; through its stewardship of the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women and hosting the UN Action on Sexual Violence secretariat; co-chairing the UNDG working group on programming issues and participating in UNDG ‘expert’ teams, including on training resident coordinators to lead CCA/UNDAF processes.
UNIFEM strengthened its capacity to track results and continued the phased delegation of authority of operational and programmatic processes to subregional offices and geographic and thematic sections. Evaluations of two operations and programme-capacity building workshops showed that capacity-building efforts are resulting in, greater efficiency and improved quality, although significant improvements are still needed.
Gaps and Challenges
While UNIFEM is registering concrete progress on key performance indicators, first-year reporting and review suggest a number of systems that require improvement. UNIFEM needs to strengthen its capacity to more rigorously document the ‘how to’ of advocacy for gender equality; more strategically evaluate catalytic initiatives to stimulate replication; and develop an explicit strategy on capacity development that advances gender equality. We will also invest in cost-benefit analyses of our role in UN coordination and reform mechanisms in order to identify where financial and human resources are most effectively invested; deploy technical expertise as expeditiously as possible to support mainstreaming gender in the 90 countries where new UNDAFs are being developed during 2009; and further invest in decentralization and delegation of authority to enhance the speed and quality of UNIFEM’s administrative and human resource functions.
Moreover, UNIFEM is enhancing its ability to link budgets with demand and results. This kind of tracking is assisting UNIFEM to better calibrate its support and activities to ensure that it is indeed making a difference in relation to implementation and accountability for gender equality.
And, finally, you also have before you a document that details how UNIFEM has adjusted the outputs and indicators in its Development and Management Results Frameworks to enable it to more effectively track performance, progress and gaps. We have done this based on the lessons of first- year reporting as well as to satisfy requirements of the computerized system for results tracking that we have tested and are now finalizing. We would also note that in view of the General Assembly agreement to modify the comprehensive policy review of operational activities from a triennial to a quadrennial cycle, urging UN funds and programmes to realign their strategic planning cycles accordingly, the Executive Board may wish to extend the UNIFEM strategic plan 2008-2011 until the end of 2013, in line with the planning cycles of UNDP and UNFPA. We are also requesting the Board to consider postponing the midterm review of the Strategic Plan from the second regular session 2009 to the annual session 2011.
Integrated Resources Framework
Finally, with regard to resources, total contributions to UNIFEM increased by 18 percent in 2008, with total resources received amounting to $121 million, including regular (core) resources of $51 million, other (non-core) resources of $70 million and contributions to UNIFEM trust funds of $5 million. The trend shows a rather steady increase in UNIFEM core resources that lately exceeded projections by 5 million dollars, or 10 percent. A second trend shows rapidly increasing non-core resources, exceeding projections by $38 million.
The resource base also widened in 2008 with the number of donor countries contributing to UNIFEM increasing by about two thirds, from 49 to 80. Moreover, as promised in the resource framework for the Strategic Plan, non-traditional sources of funding were also pursued. A case in point has been the nearly 200 percent increase in contributions from UNIFEM national committees around the world, despite their continued small scale.
In 2008, UNIFEM instituted the practice of reporting separately on the UNIFEM-administered UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women, which received $18.3 million (compared to $15.9 million in 2007). In late December, UNIFEM received a $65 million contribution from the Government of Spain to launch a new ‘gender equality fund’.
Coupled with the increase in resources has been an expansion in absorptive capacity and strengthening of accountability. I am pleased to report that in 2008, the amount of core resources delivered by UNIFEM nearly doubled. At the same time, UNIFEM strengthened capacity to track results, continued the delegation of authority to sub-regional offices; the institution of internal control frameworks as a central feature of our accountability framework; and the strengthening of staff capacity with nearly all operations staff participating in capacity building workshops over the past year. Nearly two-thirds of UNIFEM sub-regional offices have been audited over the past two years. Audit follow-up systems and actions are operational.
Despite the growth in resources, the target set in the Strategic Plan of $100 million in core resource contributions from 100 donors by 2011 is still a distant one. More important, despite improved resource mobilization and expanded absorptive capacity, demand from member states still outstripped the resources needed to respond. The roll-out of the new Gender Equality Fund, which UNIFEM is launching with initial support from the Government of Spain, will enable UNIFEM to test a different modality for advancing holistic country programming to implement commitments to gender equality in national development plans and poverty reduction strategies.
However, UN-wide obstacles that have been identified as impeding the effectiveness of the entire gender equality architecture of the UN system also affect UNIFEM’s work. As noted in the paper submitted by the Deputy Secretary-General on gaps and challenges facing the UN gender architecture, these impediments include inadequate authority, positioning and resources. While we are making continual progress in all of these areas, it is both slow and uneven.
During the past year and in response to requests from the UNIFEM Consultative Committee, we prepared two briefing notes on the criteria and methodology for allocating UNIFEM’s core resources. The latest paper was reviewed by the Consultative Committee last Friday. Following a letter that we received yesterday from the Chair of the CC to the Administrator advising the variance of views of the CC members on the subject and the Committee’s wish to continue consideration of the presented information, the Briefing Note and the letter were posted this morning on the Executive Board’s website.
The commitment to gender equality as central to development results, including the MDGs, is widely shared among development partners. With new and committed leadership at UNDP, we are confident that together with our partner agencies we can make significant progress, despite the economic crisis. We will continue to rely on guidance from the Executive Board, on advice from the UNIFEM Consultative Committee, and on the support of the partners in government and civil society that together seek to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to all development, peace and human security initiatives.
