[New York, 22 February 2010] UN Member States are intensively discussing the setting up of the new UN gender equality, with three meetings scheduled within one week.

On February 16 the United Nations Member States met in a plenary session on the gender equality entity. Opening the meeting the Assistant Secretary-General spoke strongly for the Secretary General’s report and noted that any further delay with the establishment of the entity would have an impact on the UN’s work.

In their general statements, many Member States said that there is enough information on the table to establish the entity, and asked the co-chairs to start drafting the resolution that would move the process forward (Colombia, EU, Switzerland, South Korea). Other countries demanded more that details should be discussed about and decided on before the establishment of the entity (Russia, JCC, Japan).

There seemed to be a consensus between both the more careful countries and those requiring a swift establishment of the entity, that the Secretary-General to start the recruitment process of the Under Secretary-General to lead the entity immediately (Canada, US, Russia, JCC, EU).

On Friday 19th the Member States met in an informal session on the functions and the structure of the new entity. This time the aspects of the new entity were discussed in much more detail and solutions suggested for issues needing to be clarified, such as transition period, universal presence, and staff numbers.

The proposed limited approach to country presence (80 countries in the start-up) raised concerns in delegations that saw the universal country presence as important (Russia). It was discussed that if requests for assistance come from countries where the entity does not have presence, the possibility to assist would depend on resources available. It was suggested that developed countries demanding for assistance should fund the projects themselves.

EU and some other Member States noted the need to clarify how the entity would interact between civil society organizations working on gender equality issues, an issue that has also been the concern of the GEAR Campaign. More details were also required about the links of the new entity to other UN agencies and governing bodies.

The actual transition from the present situation to the new entity raised concerns. The EU called for as short transition as possible and wanted to know more about how the operational activities could be handled during the transitional phase.

Funding was discussed in connection with staffing. Some countries were concerned how the suggested increases in staff numbers could be funded from voluntary contributions, implying that some of the suggestions made in the report were maybe too ambitious. This is interesting, as the staff costs represent only 25% of the budget of the entity.

The role of the entity caused some debate. The SG’s report proposes that the new entity would be a subsidiary body of United Nations General Assembly. This means that it is establishes by the UN GA and that as such it has the same status than UNFPA and UNDP. Some Member States wanted to look for other solutions.

Another informal session, this time about governance and funding, will take place on 23 February.

According to the work programme made by the Co-Chairs of the System-wide Coherence process (Estonia and Tunisia), there will be more informal session about the gender equality entity in the end of March, and a plenary session in the first part of April. It has not yet been scheduled for when the actual GA resolution on the entity should be made.