Gender 
UNIFEM Director Noeleen Heyzer addresses world's women on Women's Day

- During 2000, we learned a great deal about how far the world has come on the path toward gender equality. Countries worldwide participated in the five-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA), which culminated in a UN General Assembly Special Session in June 2000. 

- The issue of accountability figured prominently in the five-year review of the PFA and Progress of the World's Women, UNIFEM's biennial publication. While the Beijing Platform for Action and the programmes of action from other UN world conferences offer a resounding endorsement of the need for gender justice, they provide a limited set of indicators and targets as tools for tracking progress and concrete results intended. Finding ways and means to increase accountability, while at the same time, fostering collaboration and synergy between the wide range of stakeholders that will be required to achieve the ambitious Beijing +5 agenda are high priorities for UNIFEM. 

- That is why, in South Asia, we have worked tirelessly to bring governments and civil society together on a bi-annual basis to monitor follow up to the Beijing agenda. India has set an outstanding example by declaring the year 2001 as the year for the empowerment of women. I would like to take this occasion to congratulate the Government of India. 

- During the first two weeks of March, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will meet to formulate its work programme for the next 5 years and review the ways in which its methods of work can contribute to better monitoring and accountability mechanisms. The agenda for the CSW includes two themes that are central to UNIFEM because they are fundamental to women's survival, options and opportunities. The CSW will consider the pandemic of gender and HIV/AIDS, as well as the issue of racism and related intolerance. 

- With regard to upcoming global consultations on HIV/AIDS, the stakes for women, men, children and countries have rarely been higher. Two realities must be stressed. 

• While the disease is a health issue, the pandemic is a gender issue. As long as gender inequality exists, women's rights and opportunities to resist infection, to assert their reproductive choices, to demand safe sex, and to support their families will be threatened and the pandemic will grow in scope and impact. Unless policy makers, health care providers, the mass media, development assistance agencies and others concerned with stemming this pandemic take account of gender relations and power dynamics, it will be impossible to devise effective solutions. 
  
• Recent trends indicate that, with regard to HIV/AIDS, gender inequality can be fatal. According to recent statistics from our partner, UNAIDS, 52% of adult deaths from AIDS in 2000 were women. We are seeing dramatically increasing percentages of women infected by HIV and dying from the disease. 

- We need the March session of the CSW and the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June to take strong action in asserting the centrality of women, women's rights, and women's organizations to formulating solutions to the pandemic. 

- The upcoming World Conference on Racism (September 2001 in Durban, South Africa) and the CSW deliberations on this topic have the potential to make headway on the insidious and intersecting implications of racism and discrimination on the basis of gender. Last year the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination passed a recommendation on the gender related dimension of racial discrimination (General Recommendation 25), calling for a more systematic and consistent approach to evaluating and monitoring racial discrimination against women. This is an important step forward - and yet another tool of accountability. We have, however, a long way to go, particularly in addressing the way discrimination and intolerance on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender exacerbate conflict and violence, with pernicious and specific effects for women and girls. 

- Both HIV/AIDS and racism are issues that transcend borders and contribute to fragmentation of communities. In that sense, they are closely related to another issue that has been a central focus of UNIFEM's work for the past 10 years. The impact on women of war and armed conflict - and the potential that women have to break new ground in forging peace and reconciliation - are a key focus of UNIFEM programming over the next three years. We will be building on our involvement in groundbreaking events during 2000. 

• In July 2000, we were asked by the facilitator of the Arusha peace talks on Burundi - Nelson Mandela - to organize a high level briefing on engendering the peace accord for the 19 political parties participating in the talks. This briefing, and the conference that we organized following it which brought together 50 Burundi women from 19 political parties, led to the formulation of a concrete set of proposals to incorporate gender equality principles into a post-war Burundi. 
  
• We were honoured to support Namibia, during its Presidency of the Security Council, to undertake the first ever Security Council session in 55 years on Women and Peace and Security. The result of this historic session is Security Council Resolution 1325, a comprehensive set of recommendations that will guide UNIFEM's work. Monitoring this resolution as a mechanism of accountability will also be a high priority for UNIFEM and its NGO partners. 

- Last year I was invited to lead an international delegation to support Palestinian and Israeli women engaged in a joint initiative to engender the peace process. This was a daunting task, but it was enormously inspiring to see women struggle together to find common ground where so many others had been unable. In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, Palestinian and Israeli women continue to be at the forefront of efforts to craft a sustainable vision of peaceful co-existence in the region. 

- As women are half of every community they should be half of every solution . To ensure a continuing focus on women's role in peacebuilding - and highlight the often invisible and heroic efforts that women undertake to end conflicts -- UNIFEM and its partner, International Alert, will launch the first Millennium Peace Prize for Women at the upcoming session of the CSW. The six women who will come to New York to receive this award are inspirational leaders and representatives of organisations that demonstrate how to transcend conflict and strengthen our commitment to restoring healthy communities. These women symbolise the future of our dream for this millennium-where adversity can be surmounted and peace can be achieved. 

- What we want for the 21st century is a rekindling of hope, the capacity for women around the world to bring their dreams of equality of access, opportunity and rights, freedom from discrimination, related intolerance and peace to reality, a better world for all. 

Source: Noeleen Heyzer, UNIFEM

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