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In the words of the Undersecretary General, Michelle Bachelet, “it has been an incredible year…a year of excitement, high hopes and ambition.”

* UN Women is now present in 75 countries, supporting national leadership and political participation to strengthen organizations and institutions to build a strong foundation for equality.  In December, the General Assembly adopted a resolution to take concrete and proactive measures to advance women’s participation and leadership in politics, including in times of transition.

* UN Women is actively working to advance Security Council resolution 1325 by making sure women play a central role in peace talks, peace-building and recovery.  Now there is agreement to allocate 15% of budgets for post-conflict recovery to ensure women’s participation and at least 40% of temporary jobs in post-conflict recovery to women.

* UN Women has worked to strengthen gender equality across the UN system.  Ensuring that UN Country Teams have the capacity to advance gender equality has worked to improve coordination with development partners. UN Women is engaged in more than 100 UN joint programmes and the number of theme groups has risen from 37 in 2004 to 106 in 2011. 

In a recent address to celebrate the first year of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet summarised achievements:

"I am pleased to announce that many steps were taken last year towards equality. Cambodia adopted its first Acid Violence Law to protect women from acid attacks. The sale of acid is regulated and acid throwers face harsher criminal sentences. In Liberia, women set up justice brigades and now the level of violence against women is reduced and more perpetrators have been brought to justice. More than 250 women in Africa and Asia are now trained as mediators to prevent conflict. UN peacekeepers are now more focused on women’s protection in areas where there are high levels of sexual violence. In Darfur, in the first 9 months of 2011, peacekeepers conducted more than 26,000 patrols to protect women and children as they left villages and camps to collect firewood and grass.

During this same period, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 150 military and police were sentenced for rape and other acts of sexual violence. Vietnam now has its first national programme on gender equality with a proposed budget of $46 million. Ecuador has, for the first time, a national budget line for gender equality and women’s empowerment for every Ministry. Papua New Guinea now has a temporary special measure to increase women’s representation in the Parliament."  

However, despite all of this significant work UN Women remains underfunded by the governments with only 114 governments contributing to core funds. Meeting the target for the biennium 2012 – 2013 of  $700 million (USD) will require huge efforts in fundraising. Currently the funds total $235 million. UN Women has a new Executive Board, with H.E. Ambassador Kim Sook of the Permanent Mission of Korea serving as President for 2012 – 2013. Let us hope by the time H.E Ambassador Kim Sook's term comes to end that the financial resources available to this critical UN agency will have multiplied.

Soroptimists can support the work of UN Women by encouraging their respective governments to begin or increase the financial support given to the vital work they do for empowering women.Visit the UN Women website for more information.

 Lois Beilin

SI UN Representative, New York