by Ms. Chen Lanyan
　　Advisor of UNIFEM

 
　　From the day of its inception in 1975 as a voluntary fund for UN decade on women, UNIFEM has been operating to promote gender equality and the advancement of women, especially in the developing countries. As a UN organization with independent funding status, UNIFEM now has 16 regional offices around the developing world working in areas as mandated by the Resolution of the UN General Assembly A/RES/39/125 (1984):
　　UNIFEM was established as an innovative and catalytic fund for women's empowerment and gender equality. UNIFEM supports innovative and experimental activities benefiting women in line with national and regional priorities. It serves 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. UNIFEM plays an innovative and catalytic role in relation to the United Nations overall system of development cooperation.
　　UNIFEM advocates with the UN system to link women's interests and concerns to all critical issues on the national, regional and global agendas. UNIFEM focuses its work at the country level within the context of the Resident Coordinator system. Playing a strong advocacy role, UNIFEM concentrates on fostering a multilateral policy dialogue on women's empowerment.
　　The Resolution recently adopted by the General Assembly gives recognition to UNIFEM's role in three areas as it states in the following:
　　UNIFEM supports initiatives of member states, non-governmental organizations, and United Nations Organizations to formulate and implement activities that promote gender equality and women's empowerment. It concentrates on three thematic areas: strengthening women's economic capacity; engendering governance and leadership; and promoting women's human rights and the elimination of all forms of violence against women.
　　Built upon the above mandate, UNIFEM has been innovative in supporting projects and activities which initiate new thoughts and views, and a holistic, systematic approach to the empowerment of women and its impact on all levels of society. UNIFEM's approach to gender equality and the empowerment of women is reflected in its global and regional, and country programs.
　　Empowerment
　　UNIFEM's program is based on an empowerment framework. As articulated by its Executive Director, Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, UNIFEM's "empowerment framework is about changing or transforming power relations in favor of those who previously exercised little power over their own lives." This framework is premised on the rights of women enshrined in various international conventions and declarations including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, CEDAW and the Beijing Platform for Action.
　　Mainstreaming
　　Mainstreaming is stated in the ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) as:
　　...the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in any area and at all levels.
　　It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.
　　The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.
　　Gender as a cross cutting issue is, through mainstreaming and empowerment mechanisms, being perpetuated into all political, economic, legal, and social aspects.
　　Beijing Office
　　UNIFEM's Beijing Office, which covers China, Mongolia and North Korea, was declared open by Dr. Heyzer in July during her visit to China and is the newest among all the UN offices in Beijing.
　　The working manner of UNIFEM, empowerment and mainstreaming, are, by its nature, a collaborative effort. It depends on allies, coalitions, and the participation of actors from a wide range of disciplines working together to identify shared goals and mutually reinforcing strategies. It requires high level commitment, an enabling policy environment, and broad-based support.
　　Therefore, corresponding to the guidelines stated above of UNIFEM's mandate and strategies, UNIFEM Northeast Asia office intends to work closely with UN agencies, government organs, bilaterals, associations in civil society which certainly includes organization that represent the youth like the Youth Federation (ACYF).
　　UNIFEM encourages the submission of proposals. The reference for selection of UNIFEM projects are listed as (UNIFEM annual report):
　　* Building the capacity and leadership of women's organizations and networks;
　　* Forging new synergies and effective partnerships among women's organizations, governments, the UN system and the private sector;
　　* Undertaking pilot and demonstration projects to test innovative approaches to women's empowerment; and
　　* Building an operational knowledge base to influence gender mainstreaming;
　　To put it simply, UNIFEM welcomes proposal/ projects, which are: innovative, address public concerns, winning broad social support, has the effect of an example role, can affect policy and legislation to promote gender equality and gender equal share of benefit of social progress.
　　Taking into consideration the specific regional characteristics, UNIFEM in Northeast Asia concentrates on a few issues:
　　1. A rights-based approach rather than the traditional needs based approach. Abiding by international yardsticks for empowerment of women (such as the Convention on the Elimination of All kinds of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action), UNIFEM will work together with all parties concerned to promote the rights of women. Also UNIFEM will work to facilitate/support the Chinese government to fulfill its commitment to international conventions which China has signed and its obligation towards the international community. Particularly, UNIFEM will work together with Chinese counterparts to review its implementation of Program for the Development of Chinese Women (1995-2000) which will be taken as a Chinese contribution towards the global event of Beijing Plus Five.
　　2. To promote women's leadership by innovative approach, i.e. transformative leadership, informing rights of women to advance participation of women in grassroot governance. One way that UNIFEM hopes to achieve this goal is a project in Linqu County, Shandong Province, which is a pilot project promoting women in leadership to be replicated elsewhere.
　　3. To affirm UN commitment to the adoption of strategies to mainstream gender and to cooperate with the government to eliminate discrimination and end violence against women and girls. UNIFEM's approach in anti-violence against women, including family violence, will be through networking, through collaboration with women organizations, legislative and executive bodies, and legal practitioners, through giving technical assistance where possible to facilitate capacity-building of women's organizations and networks. Thus UNIFEM can play a strategic role to facilitate women enjoying legal rights, from the adoption of international standards (i.e. CEDAW and Beijing Platform for Action), and rights stated in Chinese legislation.
　　4. Through working together with National Statistics Bureau, UNIFEM gives support to establish more comprehensive sex-desegregated statistical system so as to encourage gender sensitivity among various levels of decision makers and to offer an indicator-system by which to monitor and evaluate the progress and shortcomings in the process of achieving gender-equality.
　　UNIFEM and Youth Federation
　　We recognize that Youth is always the pioneer, most active part of the society. We also recognize that the ACYF has played significant role promoting youth's participation in social development and in advocating youth to contribute their knowledge, energy and enthusiasm to build a country that is environmentally sustainable and socially fair, just, and equitable for both men and women. UNIFEM looks forward to working together closely with ACYF and other youth organizations to achieve gender equality.
　　Among those issues that significantly affect youth are:
　　-- unequal education opportunity for women, especially in higher education
　　-- girl-children's low attendance and high drop-out rate in primary education
　　-- the low representation of women in various social and political decision making
　　There are many areas that UNIFEM can cooperate with the Youth Federation, some suggested areas would be:
　　--- To promote the participation of women in Higher Education;
　　--- To encourage girl-children's education;
　　--- To educate girls and young women to adopt a new perspective of life attitude, which is more self-confident, socially active and fully aware of their own rights and values;
　　--- To promote responsible sexual behavior and activism in HIV/AIDS prevention and to advocate for male participation in the family planning to reverse the trend that overwhelming obligation of family planning falls upon women;
　　--- To encourage gender sensitivity for the potential leaders in the future, especially in universities.
　　We call for youth's creativity, enthusiasm and hard work in promoting social progress, particularly in building a gender equal society. UNIFEM looks forward to working together with ACYF and other youth organizations to realize this goal.
　　United Nations Development Fund for Women
　　Northeast Asia Sub-regional Office, Beijing

　　Address: 2 Liangmahe Nanlu, Beijing 100600, China
　　Tel: 86-10-65323731 ext. 248 Fax: 86-10-65322567 Email: lanyan.chen@undp.org