Behind the U.N. hoopla, a new agency for women emerges

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Story Highlights
United Nations consolidates agencies, creates group focused on women's issues
Women's advocates say previous agencies lacked clout
Roughly 60 percent of the world's population living in poverty are women and girls
By Moni BasuCNN

(CNN) -- A parade of world leaders took the lectern at the United Nations on Wednesday. But days before the speeches on a host of issues, the global body quietly undertook an issue that often flies under the radar: Women.
Last week, the United Nations consolidated four agencies that tackle women's issues and created a new super agency. Humanitarian workers around the world embraced the move. It was about time, they said, that the world got serious about how half its population lives.
The 1945 charter on which the United Nations was founded mandates equal rights for men and women. Since then, the United Nations has added new agencies that focus specifically on children, the environment, refugees, health, education, atomic energy and Palestinians. All report directly to the secretary general, except the agencies pertaining to women.
Women's advocates said the agencies were run by lower-ranking officials and lacked clout.
In 2006, a high-level panel on U.N. reform described the women's agencies as "incoherent, under-resourced and fragmented." It recommended that the United Nations create a dynamic agency focused on gender equality and women's empowerment. And last year, a coalition of 300 private development agencies launched the European Campaign for Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR), which pressured the United Nations to create a single organization to address what it described as consistent neglect of women's needs.
Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-Free World, said a double standard persists, despite the image of the United Nations as a strong women's advocacy machine. The only thing the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has in common with the well-known U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) is a similar sounding name, Donovan said.
UNIFEM had neither the high-level U.N. staff nor the money of UNICEF, said Donovan, who worked at UNICEF for 15 years. She said UNIFEM's entire global budget equaled the budget of the UNICEF operation in Ethiopia.
Donovan hopes the new agency will "lift the ideals that are worded so eloquently in U.N. declarations and resolutions off of the inert pages they're written on and plant them in real women's lives."
"Women who have been leading and achieving for decades without the help of the U.N. system will now enjoy the strengths and benefits that the U.N. can offer," she said.
Development agencies shared high expectations for the new agency's promotion of women's rights in a world where a disproportionate number of the suffering and persecuted are female.
"This is a great move," said Helene Gayle, president of CARE, an international humanitarian agency that focuses on empowering women and girls in developing nations.

Full Story:http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/24/UN.women/index.html