UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly reached an "informal agreement" to establish a single UN body with greater clout to promote equality for women, a UN official said Thursday. Jamal Benomar, chief of staff to the General Assembly president, said the 192-member world body scheduled a meeting Friday afternoon to adopt a resolution merging four existing UN bodies into a new "United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, to be known as UN Women." "We have high expectations for this new agency to be a solid foundation for advancing the human rights of women," said Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The center is a member of The GEAR Campaign comprising over 300 groups that have been working to win approval for a more effective UN organization for women. The General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution last September supporting the merger. The resolution — virtually certain to be approved — authorizes the merger and orders it to be operational by Jan. 1, 2011. The European Union has been a driving force in the four-year campaign to streamline the UN's activities promoting the status of women, and there has been intense lobbying by women's organizations and other non-governmental organizations who hailed the agreement. The draft resolution, obtained by The Associated Press, says the platform to achieve women's equality adopted by 189 nations at the 1995 UN women's conference in Beijing should be the framework for the new body's work. It called for governments to end discrimination against women and close the gender gap in 12 critical areas including health, education, employment, political participation and human rights. The resolution would consolidate the secretary-general's Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, the UN Development Fund for Women, the Division for the Advancement of Women, and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women. According to the draft, the new body's policy-oriented activities will be funded by the UN's regular budget — to which all 192 members contribute — and its programs and operations in the field will be funded by voluntary contributions. The combined budget of the four bodies being merged is about $220 million. The GEAR Campaign said it will be pressing to increase funding for UN Women to $1 billion within a few years.
