Section 3 - Educating and Partnering for CEDAW

Chapter 4
Doing CEDAW with the UN Gender
Mainstreaming Committee
By Luz Lopez-Rodriguez
“I can not imagine a UN staff who is not gender-sensitive!” remarked then
UNICEF Country Representative now Programme Director Nicholas Alipui in 2006
to emphasize the ethics for UN personnel during the annual planning workshop of
the Gender Mainstreaming Committee (GMC). Dr. Alipui was the Chairperson of
the UN-GMC from 2004-2007, one of the working groups for the UN Development
Assistance Framework (UNDAF) to ensure that gender responsive, rights-based
and participatory approaches are utilized and institutionalized in individual UN
agency’s mechanisms, structures and processes.
The task of the UN-GMC is traced to the UN Economic and Social Council’s
(ECOSOC) call for gender mainstreaming which was defined as “a strategy
for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral
dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies
and programs in all political, economic, societal spheres so that men and women
benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated” (ECOSOC, 1997). This is not exactly
new but is a refresher of the key principles of the UN Charter of 1945 and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. These direct all UN agencies and
programmes to promote the equality of rights of men and women.
Gender mainstreaming, a decade later, raises more questions than results. One
thing is certain – achieving gender equality is easier said than done, even within
the UN.
Who watches “gender” in the UN at the country
level
When the UN Secretary-General launched the UN reform agenda in 1997, it
strengthened the Resident Coordinator System (RCS) and the UN Country Teams
(UNCTs). The UN Development Group (UNDG) was the unit established to support
and strengthen the RCS and UNCT capacity. The importance of coordination at
country level has been reinforced by the introduction of the Common Country
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