The United Nations announced in July that its four agencies and offices pertaining to women would be merged into one agency named the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, or UN Women. Ordinarily an announcement like this would be met with accolades except two of the nations elected to serve on the agency’s board, Saudi Arabia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have a less than stellar record when it comes to women’s issues. Iran, a country whose government recently imposed a sentence of stoning on a woman for alleged adultery, would also have been elected to the board if not for the last minute entry of East Timor.

In Saudi Arabia a woman cannot drive a car or have a job without permission from a male relative and, according to Islamic law, every Saudi female must have a male guardian who is responsible for making legal and personal decisions for her. There is a movement within Saudi Arabia to loosen these restrictions but it has been met with resistance and hasn’t made much traction thus far.  

Women in Saudi Arabia hold few positions of power. A report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace paints a grim political picture. There are only six part-time female advisors and 150 male members of the Shura Council, Saudi Arabia’s chief legislative body. No women serve on any of the close to 200 municipal councils in the country. How can the Saudi representative to the UN Women board be expected to advance and empower women of the world when his own country treats women more like property than people? 

The plight of women in the DRC is even more dire. War has ripped this central African nation apart since 1997 with women bearing the brunt of the violence. Rape is used as a weapon of war by all sides in this muddled conflict. Often times the rapes are so brutal the women are left permanently scarred, both emotionally and physically, and many contract HIV as a result of the assault.

The DRC ranks 137th out of 138 in the UN’s Gender Inequality Index. Women hold under 8 percent of the country’s parliamentary seats even though the country’s new constitution requires the national government to guarantee that women have equal representation in national and local governments. To date, no legislation has been drafted to bring the government into compliance with its own constitution. Again, this is the country chosen to represent women’s interests in the UN?

UN Women will officially be operational as of January 1, 2011. The agency has its work cut out fulfilling its goals of “helping Member States implement standards, providing technical and financial support to countries which request it, and forging partnerships with civil society” all with an annual budget of $500 million. 

The UN plays a beneficial and important role in the world, however I am not optimistic that this new agency will succeed in fulfilling its mandate based on the current makeup of its executive board and such a low annual budget.  I encourage everyone to keep a critical eye on UN Women because there is too much at stake for this agency to fail.

Reach Christine Detz here