UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 (IPS) – In 2015, the 193 member states of the UN adopted seventeen goals for global health, which together form the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved globally by 2030.
The UN hosted an SDG Summit 2023 on September 18 and 19 to assess progress towards these goals. One of its goals is to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” At this point, progress is not going well.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned in July: “Halfway to the 2030 deadline, the Sustainable Development Goals have drifted dangerously off course. Gender equality is almost 300 years away.” One of the furthest behind is the Asia-Pacific. Although a dynamic region, the Asia-Pacific region should have made half the progress needed to achieve the goals at this point, but progress is only 14.4%. According to the UN Women report on Women’s Leadership in Asia-Pacific, women’s representation in parliament in the Asia-Pacific is 20%, below the global average of 25%. Women are underrepresented among the chairmen of the standing committees responsible for finance and human rights.
Women’s participation in peace negotiations – as negotiators, mediators and signatories – is extremely rare. Women hold only 20% of leadership positions. This lack of progress also exists at the UN. The Asia-Pacific is home to approximately 4.3 billion people – 54% of the world’s population – and more than half of the world’s women. Yet only 18% of women come from the region, among women in professional and senior staff categories at UN organizations. Among the professional staff of UN organizations, there is a visible disproportionate equality between the West and the rest of the world. Of the five regional groups of the UN Member States – Western European and other states, African states, Asia and the Pacific states, Eastern European states, Latin American and Caribbean states – women from Western European and other states , including North America, actually represents a larger share of the population. than half of professional women (51%) in the UN system. Women from the Asia-Pacific region make up only 6% of senior or decision-making positions in UN organizations. The majority of these posts (approximately 53%) are occupied by personnel from Western European and other states. The recent assessment of racism in UN organizations by the Joint Inspection Unit, the UN’s external monitoring body, confirmed that UN staff from countries in the Global South, where the population consists mainly of people of color, tend to be in lower pay grades and is in higher spheres. less authority than those from countries where the population is predominantly white or from the group of Western European and Other States. This racial discrimination in terms of seniority and authority has emerged as a macrostructural problem that needs to be addressed. At the opening of the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women, Secretary General Guterres said: “We need a cultural change – in the world and in our United Nations. Women everywhere must be recognized as equal and promoted on that basis. We need more than goals; we need action, targets and benchmarks to measure what we do. But for the United Nations, gender equality is not just a matter of staffing. It affects everything we do.” If the UN is serious about definitively advancing the status of women, its organizations should focus exclusively on necessary measures to increase the representation of women from the countries of Asia and the Pacific.
These measures should include, but not be limited to, setting targets for balanced regional diversity in UN organizations, ensuring that recruitment and selection assessments are free from bias, and conducting audits of the career progress of women in Asia and the Pacific to identify and remove barriers. It is also essential to ensure that women from the region are placed in decision-making positions. UN organizations must faithfully reflect the diversity and dynamism of staff from all countries and regions of the world, including at senior and decision-making levels. This aspect is crucial if the organizations want to implement the mandates to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Presenting at the event organized by the UN Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion to commemorate the 77th UN Day, Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN and former Under-Secretary-General of the UN, noted that UN Charter is “the first international agreement to affirm the principle of equality between women and men, with explicit references in Article 8 stating that both men and women have unlimited eligibility to participate in various bodies of the UN.”
“It would therefore be of utmost importance for the UN to ensure equality, inclusion and diversity in its workforce in a real and meaningful sense,” he said. ‘Leave no one behind’ is the central, transformative promise of the Sustainable Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals adopted eight years ago. Delivering on this promise for all women and girls requires addressing the rights, needs and concerns of marginalized groups.
Leaders of UN organizations must ensure that they achieve their goals both at home and in their own organizations, while calling for their realization globally.
Shihana Mohammed is one of the coordinators of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) and a Public Voices Fellow at The OpEd Project and Equality Now.
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