UN Women: Institutional Merger and Cooperation in Its First Year

On 2 July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 64/289 in New York, establishing the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, commonly known as UN Women. It emerged from the UN's system-wide coherence reforms. One objective was to reduce fragmentation and duplication among bodies working on women's issues and connect international policy discussions with practical assistance in individual countries.

The meeting record shows that Estonia's Permanent Representative, Tiina Intelmann, and Tunisia's Permanent Representative, Ghazi Jomaa, jointly facilitated consultations. India's representative, Hardeep Singh Puri, chaired some ambassador-level meetings during the final phase. Egypt's representative spoke on behalf of the Joint Coordinating Committee of the Group of 77 and China and the Non-Aligned Movement, emphasizing universality, national ownership and geographical representation. The parties negotiated the governance arrangements, while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also publicly acknowledged the advocacy of women's civil society organizations.

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The resolution combined the functions of four existing units: the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, the Division for the Advancement of Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women. The new entity assumed both Secretariat functions and operational activities at country level. Existing research, training and assistance programmes were to continue until new arrangements replaced the old ones.

The transfer also encompassed facilities, assets, liabilities and contractual obligations. The resolution designated the period from its adoption to 31 December 2010 as a transition and provided for an orderly expansion of capacity based on the predecessors' existing field networks. UN Women began operations on 1 January 2011. Thus, 2010 was the establishment and transition phase, while 2011 was the unified entity's first operational year. Earlier projects should be traced to its predecessors.

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The institutional design distinguished policy standards from operational management. The General Assembly, Economic and Social Council and Commission on the Status of Women guided normative work. Operational activities came under the layered oversight of the Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and the newly established Executive Board. The Board had 41 seats, 35 allocated geographically and six in a contributing-country category. Of the latter, two were reserved for developing countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee.

The head held the rank of Under-Secretary-General, was appointed by the Secretary-General in consultation with Member States, and reported to the Secretary-General. Corresponding authority to manage staff was also delegated to the head. In September 2010, Ban Ki-moon appointed former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet as the first Executive Director. The Executive Board first met in January 2011, after which the entity advanced its start-up work through a 100-day action plan.

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Resolution 64/289 did not equate establishment with a fully funded appropriation. Funding for support to intergovernmental normative processes came from the UN regular budget, subject to General Assembly approval. Operational processes and operational activities at all levels depended on voluntary contributions approved by the Executive Board. The resolution therefore asked Member States, where possible, to provide multi-year, stable and predictable core contributions and required financial information to be made public.

The Executive Director's 2012 progress report listed combined 2011 income from non-earmarked and earmarked resources of US$227.2 million, below the US$479 million budget shown in the table. Non-earmarked resources were approximately US$124.6 million and earmarked resources approximately US$102.6 million. Fundraising fell short of the target, so the amount of work the entity could undertake still depended on actual resources and could not be inferred directly from the establishing resolution.

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The early annual report recorded that, during Tunisia's political transition in 2011, UN Women sent experts to support an electoral subcommission's discussions on measures for gender parity among candidates and helped local women's groups strengthen their advocacy. It also supported a coalition of Egyptian women's organizations participating in the transition, encouraging discussions on a women's charter concerning political representation, public services and discriminatory laws. Its role was to provide technical and organizational support; local institutions and social forces continued to drive the reforms themselves.

The resolution clearly defined this relationship. UN Women was to provide guidance and technical support at Member States' request, in consultation with national women's mechanisms. Field work was to be integrated into UN country teams, with coordination on gender equality under the overall leadership of the Resident Coordinator.

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The report on progress in 2011, submitted in 2012, stated that headquarters was gradually organized around three pillars: partnerships, coordination and intergovernmental affairs; programmes and policy; and management and administration. Cross-country cooperation also reached specific services. UN Women supported exchanges between Burundi and Rwanda on one-stop services for survivors of violence and helped Moroccan experts train their Mauritanian counterparts in preparation for a survey on gender-based violence.

The same report acknowledged that excessive centralization of decisions, inadequate communication and uneven office capacities still caused delays. Institutional merger was therefore only a starting point. Under the founding resolution, the head was required to report separately on normative work to the Commission on the Status of Women and on operational activities to the Executive Board, with General Assembly oversight through the Economic and Social Council. These reporting channels provided an institutional basis for checking whether policy commitments and field work were connected.

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