gender

UN Agency for Women – Bargaining with Patriarchy

The idea of a multi-tasking UN women’s agency that is long in teeth (being able to push for women’s rights and gender equality effectively) and well-sourced to deliver programs has been much discussed under the rubric of UN reform. The UN Reform itself came into being after years of the UN system being charged by critics as overly bureaucratic and inefficient. Listed along with sustainable development and human rights, gender was identified as one of those cross-cutting issues which must be an integral part of the UN system.

In particular, the 2006 report, “Delivering as One”, prepared by The Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on System-Wide Coherence, was not sparing in its critique of the gender performance by the UN:

While the UN remains a key actor in supporting countries to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, there is a strong sense that the UN system’s contribution has been incoherent, under-resourced and fragmented.

As part of the solution, the report called for the consolidation of the existing three UN gender institutions – UNIFEM, Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), and Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women (OSAGI). The new institution will also receive a promotion – the Executive Director of the new agency will have the rank of the Under-Secretary-General, the agency will be well-funded to do its job, and gender equality remains a mandate for everyone in the UN system.

These recommendations were well-received by the international community, particularly those in the women’s NGOs, who have long advocated for women’s rights to be given greater focus and resource by the UN.

That was in 2006. We are now half way through 2009, there is still no sign of this recommendation being translated into actual dollar figures.

This lack of action has not being overlooked. Long-time advocate for gender equality and Co-Director of AIDS-FREE World, Stephen Lewis lamented over the delayed creation of a new UN women’s agency.

The need for a new women’s agency in the UN is not just a rhetoric exercise under the name of UN Reform. Let’s take UNIFEM, the agency which has the mandate for gender equality, as an example. Currently UNIFEM is located under the organisational structure of the UNDP (UN Development Program). Administratively, this means UNDP deals with UNIFEM’s management and operations including finance. In addition to the potential administrative delays due to the “middleman” approach, UNIFEM is also charged with an administrative fee when there are financial processes to be done, such as a funding agreement. Though these administrative fees are small, for a smaller agency the cost does add up overtime.

Secondly, because UNIFEM is located under UNDP, at the country level this means it is up to each UNDP Country Director to decide whether UNIFEM can participate in high-level meetings. Given that gender is recognised as a cross-cutting issue, and most of the countries with UN presence has signed onto CEDAW, MDG, or the Beijing Platform, the presence of UNIFEM at high-level meetings to ensure gender issues are fully considered in discussions is crucial.

UNIFEM’s ambiguous status can also create complication with local partners and governments. Because not all UNIFEM office in each country are formally registered (again, courtesy of it being under UNDP) as a UN body, joint projects with governments can sometimes present difficulty as each country has different registration requirements for NGOs and multilateral entities. I recall one instance where there was a joint UNIFEM event with a partner government agency where two days before signing, there was a crisis as the agreement requires the NGO to be formally recognised by the partner government’s ministry of foreign affairs. As UNIFEM is “with” UNDP, it has no formal recognition of its own. After some brainstorming sessions, the problem was solved because the funding was co-contributed by another UN agency which has such status.

The issue at hand is not whether other UN agencies are supportive of UNIFEM’s mandate and what it has been tasked to achieve. Rather, the problem lies in why the organisational structuring has placed UNIFEM in such a position that makes it vulnerable so that negotiations, bargaining, and winning “approval” from other UN agencies may be needed before even attending a meeting.

These may seem like routine administrative process or organisational politics, but taken as a whole, it means UNIFEM spends an inordinate amount of time lobbying and building stakeholder relationships, just to make sure it can do its job. In a powerful and illuminating article written by the feminist international relation theorist, Deniz Kandiyoti observed what she calls the “patriarchal bargaining” – the nuanced process which women make on a daily basis to either have access to resources or just to survive.

It is ironic that the UN agency mandated to promote women’s equality and rights is also doing its own bargaining.

© 2009 People and Development.