New UN agency for women: local, international stakeholders to hold moot on September 8

Civil society organisations, government functionaries and representatives of international organisations would hold a consultation on September 8 to devise a joint strategy for establishing United Nations agency 'UN Women', aimed at exclusively addressing women's rights and issues.
The consultation has been convened by Civil Society Alliance comprising 12 organisations and women rights activists who have been involved in Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) campaign.
These organisations are namely AGHS, ASR, Aurat Foundation, Khwendo Kor, PODA, Rozan, SACH, Shirkat Gah, SIMROGH, SPO, Sungi and WORD, said a news release.
The consultation comprises of three sessions on "orientation and sharing of position on UN WOMEN", "perspective of government, UN and funding agencies" and "strategies and way forward".
In the moot, position and expectations of Civil Society Alliance would also be shared and discussed in detail.
The moot would be attended by ministers, advisers of federal and provincial governments and representatives of different institutions of UN wherein matters relating to making UN women stronger and independent would be discussed and recommendations would be formulated.
In the next few months, a number of decisions regarding structure, mandate and scope of this agency would be taken therefore this national consultation would provide an opportunity to key stakeholders for sharing their perspective about the agency.
`UN Women' will be formed in January 2011 after over 60 years of the formation of United Nations. To date, within the UN, three out of four small entities dedicated for women including Office Of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues (OSAGI), Division for Advancement for Women (DAW) and Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) have been working in different areas mainly in monitoring and research areas.
UNIFEM, the fourth entity, has had limited national level presence in some countries. All the four entities have negligible budgets, no seat at higher decision-making levels of the UN and limited mandates. 'UN Women' has been promised a wider mandate, high level leadership and considerably increased budget.