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Mr co-Chair,
CANZ welcomes this opportunity to discuss mandates related to gender equality and the empowerment of women, and to United Nations research and training institutions. We thank the co-Chairs for calling this additional informal to discuss these important issues.
Gender equality and the empowerment of women
We welcome recognition in the Secretary-General’s report that gender issues deserve to be considered in the same way as other priorities which cut across the entire UN agenda. This correctly acknowledges that promoting gender equality and empowering women is a critical part of what the UN does. Accordingly, CANZ supports gender issues being examined both as part of the mandates review, and by the High-level Panel on system wide coherence.
We are pleased the Secretary-General has given the High-level Panel responsibility for reviewing and strengthening the UN architecture for promoting gender equality and empowering women. The High-level Panel’s work, and our efforts to review mandates, should be mutually supportive. We must ensure coherence between the recommendations stemming from both processes, and vigilance in ensuring they are appropriately carried out.
CANZ supports the recommendations on gender equality in the Secretary-General’s report, and we would like to highlight three of them here.
First, we agree that some consolidation of reporting in this field, as in others, would be a very useful initial step. A level of specificity of reporting on wide-ranging gender issues is still required. However, the more reports which are produced by the system, the less status and impact they have, collectively and individually. The focus should be on monitoring implementation of the key elements of the international framework on gender issues - the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, CEDAW, the International Conference on Population and Development and the Millennium Development Goals – and the achievement of gender equality results by the United Nations, including through gender mainstreaming.
Second, it is also important in the context of the mandates review to make clearer the respective roles of the General Assembly, the Commission on the Status of Women, and the Human Rights Council with regards to gender equality. However, CANZ supports the Secretary General’s view that the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women should be examined as part of wider human rights treaty body reform, which CANZ strongly supports.
Third, we support calls to review progress in implementing commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming, to review and strengthen the institutional resources devoted to the promotion of gender equality, and to evaluate successes and failures in achieving gender equality results. CANZ does, though, question whether this would best be pursued through the mandates review, or through other mechanisms, including the High-level Panel on system wide coherence.
What is most important is that we ensure that concrete action is taken to reform the United Nations’ gender architecture to better and more rapidly fulfil our commitments to achieve gender equality.
UN research and training institutes
There is a wide range of UN research and training institutes. These various institutes are uncoordinated, and are not necessarily responsive to the needs of States, and the Organisation as a whole.
CANZ is interested in the Secretary-General’s proposal to consolidate all the institutes into one educational, research and training system – a proposal that merits further investigation. In developing such a coordinated system, there should be a thorough assessment of what is needed, what elements should be done in-house by the UN, and what elements are best (and, often, already) done by others whose work the UN can access rather than replicate.
We also support improving accountability, including by instituting a periodic review to measure the UN training system’s relevance to States and the UN as a whole. As part of a more rigorous accountability mechanism, CANZ believes the proposed new research and training system should be funded entirely from voluntary contributions.
The mandates review is an ideal opportunity to revitalise the research and training capacity of the United Nations, so that it may contribute more effectively to States, the Organisation, and the broader academic community.
Thank you, Mr co-Chair.
