UN Women

Aim

To influence the UK Government so that its policy positions reflect our vision of a women’s agency capable of making radical advances towards gender equality and women’s empowerment across the world through:

• Strong, effective operational capacity
• Autonomous and authoritative decision making
• A mandate to hold other agencies and governments accountable for delivering on women’s rights
• Ambitious funding
• Strong mechanisms for civil society inclusion and participation 

Objectives

• To establish detailed policy positions and ‘asks’ on the UN Women’s Agency
• Develop an advocacy strategy to influence key decision makers
• Maintain relationships and links with the EU working group of the GEAR campaign and other relevant global networks/groups 

Chair – Kathy Peach VSO Kathy.Peach@vso.org.uk

News

July 2011

GADN’s working group sent a letter with the signatures of 23 NGOs to Andrew Mitchell on Tuesday 5 July asking for the Government to commit £21 million in annual core funding to UN Women, to which Andrew Mitchell responded the following day. Unfortunately DFID’s announcement was for just £10 million this year and next. For coverage of GADN in the Guardian please follow these links: Britain backs UN Women and At last the government stumps up for UN Women

Regional and national plans for UN Women will begin around August/September, so you may want to advise your partners that this will be the timing for them to get in touch with their UN Women offices if they want to participate in those planning processes.