UN makes progress on streamlined gender agency

Women's Affairs Minister Pansy Wong is pleased that the United Nations has made rapid progress on an issue that New Zealand lobbied strongly for at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York earlier this month.

The Chair of the Western European and Other States Group has advised that the UN is going to start calling for nominations for an Under Secretary General, to oversee the streamlining of the UN agencies that work for women.

 "As leader of the New Zealand delegation I argued and lobbied strongly for the establishment of a streamlined UN gender entity," Mrs Wong says.

"Since then there has been significant progress on both those issues due, in part, to New Zealand's strong stance. The Secretary General has decided to speed up the process for creation of the new gender entity by beginning the process of calling for nominations for an Under Secretary General."

The proposal is for UN agencies that work for women - the Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women - to be streamlined into one body.

"It makes sense that these functions be brought together and that there is a single UN body - led by an Under Secretary-General - with the mandate and status to campaign for the advancement of women the world over," Mrs Wong says.

While at the CSW, New Zealand held meetings with Ministers, senior officials and Ambassadors from Canada, China, Indonesia, Jordan, Korea, Norway, the Philippines, Samoa, the UK, USA and the UN to get support for the formation of the new entity as soon as possible.

"This is a welcome and prompt response to New Zealand and all the other nations who lobbied for a speedy implementation of this change," Mrs Wong says.