In this Isis interview, former Chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women Patricia Licuanan shares her views on the interventions of women’s organisations from the South towards strengthening the UN gender equality architecture. What advice does she have for women’s organisations to ensure that this recommendation pushes through?

A recommendation to strengthen the United Nations (UN) Gender Equality Architecture (GEA) was put forward by the UN Coherence Panel in November last year. Nevertheless, women's organisations across the globe continue to engage in various capacities to ensure that this recommendation will be acted upon.

The recommendation calls for the consolidation of the three already established units of the UN, namely, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), and the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues (OSAGI). This move is hoped to lead to a stronger agency for women, which will have a substantially increased budget.

Just recently, international women's organisations, Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) and Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL), called for country-level support for the GEA as well as the separation of the Gender Equality section from the UN Reform recommendations so as it can be negotiated regardless of what happens with the other components of the report.

Women's groups are currently hoping that actions on the GEA be undertaken before the 61st session of the UN General Assembly ends in August 2007. 

Isis International-Manila interviewed Dr. Partricia Licuanan of the South East Asia Women Watch (SEAWWatch) and the current president of Miriam College in the Philippines, in her capacity as former Chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women for the 1995 UN 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing. Licuanan looks back on what the women’s movement from the South has achieved in terms of the GEA and what she hopes to see in the coming months.

Isis International-Manila [Isis]: How would you describe the engagement of the women’s organisations from the South in the institution-building processes of the UN, in particular that of the GEA?

Patricia Licuanan [Licuanan]: When we were introduced to the current round of discussions around the issue of gender architecture, it came in a rather simple form. They began by talking about incorporating UNIFEM into the UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]. The NGOs in the Philippines as well as in the region immediately reacted to this proposal because we felt that UNIFEM, being one of the major gender entities in the UN, should have a life of its own. That started some of our discussions and letters to various entities in the UN expressing our opinion that UNIFEM should not be absorbed into UNDP and the need rather for a strengthened gender architecture in the UN.

When the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on System-wide Coherence was formed and it was tasked to address, among others, the issue of the UN gender architecture, we obviously wanted the gender architecture in the United Nations to be larger, better supported, and have greater impact. We started having internal discussions within the country as well as across the region. Various groups wrote to the Coherence Panel and participated in consultation meetings.

The Coherence Panel called for a consultative meeting with civil society in Geneva and a number of us from the South, particularly from Asia- Pacific, made our presence felt. At that time, I'm not sure how optimistic we were that the panel would actually take our recommendations seriously. But the dynamics of that meeting in Geneva was quite positive and the members of the panel present actually seemed to be listening. And when the report came out, our recommendations were in it!

Isis: What would you say were the benefits derived from women's organisations' engagements, specifically coming from a developing nation’s perspective?

Licuanan: I think that we really made a difference. The Coherence Panel was influenced quite a bit by the women’s movement. And the women from the developing world had a special role to play, lending credibility to the points being made because we were talking from our experience and the experience of the majority of the world’s women.

Isis: What was the take of OSAGI, DAW, and UNIFEM on this matter? Were there conflicts within the UN on this recommendation?

Licuanan: I believe that everyone is trying hard to be very professional and objective. My sense of the matter is that UNIFEM is quite positive and feels that this is an important step. OSAGI and DAW on the other hand seem lukewarm or ambivalent at best, perhaps fearful that UNIFEM might become the dominant agency. But I think those fears are unfounded. From the start, there is a logical division of labour—the major normative role will be played by DAW and OSAGI and the operational function and country-level presence will be provided mainly by UNIFEM. Also, it makes absolute sense that the head of UNIFEM should have the rank of Assistant Secretary-General. I really hope that these current gender entities will be able to go beyond turf issues and work together on this for the good of women. And the women’s movement is ready to support their collegial efforts.

Isis: What do you think are the things that women's organisations should keep an eye on, given that the status of this GEA is that it is still being discussed and being debated upon?

Licuanan: The women’s movement should watch out for and prevent some major traps. One major trap is the “all or none” formula which stipulates that all the recommendations of the Coherence Panel should be taken together and approved as a whole. Our position is that the provisions on the gender architecture can be approved and implemented independently of the rest of the recommendations.

A second trap is the viewpoint that implies or explicitly states that building up a strong UN gender entity will bring us back to the “women and development” approach rather than the “gender mainstreaming” approach. That is not true because mainstreaming does not mean doing away with gender-specific or women-specific structures and programs. You need a strong gender entity in order to do gender mainstreaming. Our experience at the national level is that you have to have very strong national machinery for women in order for the different ministries or departments to mainstream gender into their programming. There is need for a strong gender entity at the same time that women’s empowerment and gender equality will remain the responsibility of the whole UN. Mainstreaming and the gender entity will go on hand in hand. It’s a false issue to say that this is a step backward.

The final trap is that we cannot afford this UN gender entity. The question of funding will always be raised and that is of course a major challenge. But there are enough funders who are ready to support the GEA. Some countries have already committed support. We just have to raise the funds. We cannot use it as an argument for not moving forward.

Isis: Could you describe current efforts presently undertaken by the women's organisations from the South to ensure that the recommendation will be acted upon by the UN before the session of the General Assembly ends in August 2007?

Licuanan: We are doing what we always do in relation to the UN. We are lobbying our governments. We are speaking out at appropriate fora, locally, regionally, and globally. We have to ensure that our national machineries for women are aware of the issues surrounding the UN GEA and why such a structure is important to us at the country level. We have to mobilise women NGOs around the issue so that they can raise these with the national machinery on women which in turn can raise these with our foreign ministries. Once the arguments are accepted we should provide input into country statements that will be made at the floor of the UN. We have to link up with sympathetic countries, particularly in the G-77. This is a lot of work for women’s groups because we have a lot of other things on our plate. But women are used to hard work and long days. And this is important!

Related article:
“UN Panel calls for more solid gender architecture” in we! December 2006

Sources:
“Urgent action needed on GEA” from the  Center for Women's Global Leadership, posted on June 11, 2007, <http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/policy/unadvocacy/gea.html>.
“Urgent: Action needed to gain stronger gender equality architecture” from Women's Environment & Development Organization, posted on May 23, 2007, <http://www.wedo.org/library.aspx?KeywordID=13>.