16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

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16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the United Nations System and Host Country Agencies
and supervising agencies, to further strengthen inter-agency cooperation in line with the
concept “One United Nations”10 of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board
for Coordination.
Recommendation 9:
Further Efforts Should Be Deployed to Promote Gender Balance
63. Gender Balance continued to be on the agenda of each agency. The 14th Meeting
had called upon agencies to encourage the selection of women candidates in order to
ensure full compliance with each organization’s policies on gender. A portion of the fellowships
programmes should be designed for women only. IAEA had advanced more
than other Agencies by designing special training programmes for women. Through
points of contact in member states, IAEA had initiated the arrangement of fellowships
for young professional women. In addition, IAEA’s Fellowships Website featured a
link “Fellowships Programme for Young Professional Women”. UN/DESA also had a
Division for the Advancement of Women. All its training activities were geared toward
the advancement and the empowerment of women. In May 2006 the Office of the
Special Advisor on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women hosted a meeting of
women ambassadors to the United Nations to discuss strategies and mechanisms for
engaging member states more actively in issues pertaining to gender mainstreaming in
the United Nations system. Despite the difficulties arising from traditional or political
motives, it was the duty of the Fellowships Services and Sections to see to it that
female candidates were given priority when they were on an equal footing with male
candidates during the selection process. The roles of the governments, donors and the
implementing agencies should be clear and distinct. Governments and donors might
have a consultative role but they should not influence, even less determine, the selection
process. Otherwise, the impartiality of the UN agencies would be jeopardized. The
percentage of females receiving some sort of training or fellowship varied from agency
to agency. However, reasonable progress continued to be made in advancing gender
mainstreaming. It was encouraging to note that since the 14th Meeting in Vienna in
2002, the number of female trainees had been on the rise. UN/DESA for its part applied
gender balance as a selection criterion in all its training and fellowships activities.
In the past two years, the ratio between male and female fellows had been: 40% males
to 60% females. Furthermore, the number of women who were invited to participate
in group training activities was increasing progressively.
Recommendation 10:
The Annual Report of IAPSO on Training
64. According to this recommendation, UN/DESA had to contact the appropriate highlevel
coordination body to obtain more information on the purpose of the annual
10
Op. cit.