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UNIFEM: Working for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality: UNIFEM’S Mandate • To support innovative and experimental activities benefiting women in line with national and regional priorities; • To serve as a catalyst, with the goal of ensuring the appropriate involvement of women in mainstream development activities, as often as possible at the pre-investment stage; • To play an innovative and catalytic role in relation to the United Nations overall system of development cooperation. The United Nations Development Fund for Women (IJNIFEM) is the women’s fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance in over 100 countries to innovative programs and strategies that promote women’s human rights, political participation, and economic security worldwide. UNIFEM works in partnership with UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to link women’ s issues and concerns to national, regional and global agendas. Implementing an Empowerment Framework UNIFEM’s program strategy is guided by an empowerment framework that is based on promoting women’s rights, opportunities and capacities. Within this framework, UNIFEM focuses on three areas: • Strengthening women’s economic rights and empowering women to enjoy secure livelihoods as entrepreneurs, producers and home-based workers, especially in the context of new trade agendas and technologies; • Engendering governance and peace-building to increase women’s participation in decision-making processes that shape their lives; Promoting women’s human rights to eliminate all forms of violence against women and transform development into a more peaceful, equitable and sustainable process. UNIFEM works to transform women’s lives by ensuring that commitments made by the international community to achieve gender equality are fulfilled. These include the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Within the UN system, UNIFEM works to ensure that gender concerns are taken into account in all levels of programming and in efforts towards the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals. UNIFEM uses five core strategies to guide its programs: 1. Strengthening the capacity and leadership of women’s organizations and networks; 2. Leveraging political and financial support for women from a wide range of stakeholders; 3. Forging new partnerships among women’s organizations, governments, the UN system and the private sector; 4. Undertaking pilot projects to test innovative approaches to women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming; 5. Building a knowledge base on effective strategies for engendering mainstream development. Building Women’s Leadership for the 21st Century UNIIFEM promotes women’s leadership in the interest of ensuring that women have an equal voice in shaping the policies that affect their lives and choices. In East Timor, UNIFEM supported the training of female candidates to participate in the 2001 elections. A total of 268 women stood for office - representing 27% of candidates - and 1 woman was elected to the 88 seat Constituent Assembly. United Nations Development Fund for Women 304 East 45th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10017 Tel: 2l2-906-6400 - Fax: 212-906-6705 e-mail: unifem@undp.org – http://www.unifem.undp.org | Return Home | About Us | What's New | Current Focus | Articles | Great Links | Email Form | |
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