Letter from the Executive Director:

The Value of the Women's Caucus

We are proud of everybody who has been and still is part of the new developments regarding the creation of the new gender architecture for the UN. What comes next will equally depend on our continued commitment and women's involvement in all processes, at all levels. I want to emphasize "women"- not because I think they need to be overburdened, solely responsible or have special rights - but because the next phase for what's now called 'UN Women' is all about their life, their needs, their roles and their interaction with the developments in every country of the world.

In our own small world as an international advocacy organization, WEDO expects to be part of the changes at the global level while interacting with women at the local level. As UN Women develops further, we expect that those things that have worked for all of us will be reinforced and hopefully made more sustainable, while lessons learned will also guide next steps.

WEDO recently coordinated the women's caucus at the conference of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). This reminded me of the impact that the women's caucus had on me personally when I first started interacting with the UN. Organized by women's organizations no matter where in the world, it was always a comfortable space. The settings and the participants have of course fluctuated through the years and within different UN spaces, but I believe that it is worthwhile to capture the years of work that women from the world put into interacting, exchanging ideas and information, creating room for divergent partners and a comfortable space to involve government actors. How we develop these women-driven spaces within the new UN Women context will be important to consider in our future work. Women of the world already own their women's caucus. Let's make sure it remains something that future generations will want to take care of and is worth holding onto for them.

The United Nations' 10th Conference of Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP-10), held in Nagoya, Japan, was one of the most successful meetings in the history of the Convention - for meeting commitments on biodiversity, as well as for women.

After seven years of negotiations, Parties adopted the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (ABS Protocol). Parties also established a 10-year Strategic Plan and adopted a Resource Mobilization strategy (Outcomes of the CBD COP-10: http://www.cbd.int/nagoya/outcomes/).

The CBD continued to uphold its position as the only Rio Convention with a Gender Plan of Action (adopted at COP-9), which aims to mainstream gender within all of the CBD's processes and activities. As a result of this mandate for the CBD Secretariat and Member States, Women were instituted as a major stakeholder at the COP-10, giving the Women's Caucus, facilitated by WEDO, an opportunity to make an intervention at the High-Level Segment. WEDO which convened daily meetings, coordinated advocacy efforts, made other official interventions, and participated in side events, interviews and press conferences. The proactive stance of the Women's Caucus helped to achieve major successes for women and gender equality issues at the CBD COP-10.

Such successes included strengthened language on gender mainstreaming within the CBD. After a statement from the Women's Caucus on increasing core support for a gender focal point in the Secretariat, several countries including Thailand, Tanzania, Cameroon, and Belgium on behalf of the EU, supported the statement and called for improved action by all countries to implement the Gender Plan of Action and supportive documents at country level. Other supportive countries included Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa. In addition, women and gender language was retained and, in some cases, improved in both the ABS Protocol and the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan. Both decisions call for gender mainstreaming, recognizing the vital role of women in these processes and the need for full and equal participation of women and men at all levels of policy making and implementation.

Of course, there is more work to be done! Next steps are to create synergies among the three Conventions though a gender perspective in preparations for the Rio+ 20 Earth Summit 2012. WEDO looks forward to joining efforts with our partners to generate political will, increase institutional capacity and financial resources to effectively mainstream gender in the three Rio Conventions.

For more information on gender and biodiversity and WEDO's activities at the CBD please visit our website. To sign up for the women and biodiversity GoogleGroup, please e-mail Rachel[at]wedo.org and Natalia[at]wedo.org

Michelle Bachelet

For several years, women's, social justice and human rights organizations mobilized for improved programming on gender equality at the United Nations. The GEAR (Gender Equality Architecture Reform) campaign is one example of over 300 organizations' commitment to advocating for a UN that works for women. On July 2, 2010 after years of lobbying, UN Women was established to consolidate four existing gender equality agencies at the UN to be headed by an Under-Secretary-General (USG). The GEAR campaign emphasized that the new USG must have a vision for and demonstrated commitment to meeting gender equality goals and securing women's human rights.

On September 14th 2010, civil society rejoiced when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon appointed former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet as the new USG to head UN Women. Charlotte Bunch in a GEAR Campaign Press Release stated:

"Michelle Bachelet is a top notch choice and has long been one of GEAR's dream candidates. An effective leader of great integrity, Bachelet has demonstrated strong commitment to women's empowerment and the ability to shape gender equality policies in a variety of areas. She also has the stature to mobilize the resources crucial to make UN Women a success..."

As Minister of Health, Minister of National Defense, President of Chile, and President of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), Michelle Bachelet has an accomplished political career. In Chile, she was able to make considerable progress on social justice issues. She appointed a gender-balanced cabinet, she increased social services for women and children and she fought for progressive government policies on accessible contraception and HIV/AIDS prevention.

The appointment of Michelle Bachelet gives civil society hope that, worldwide, the concerns of women on the ground can be supported and addressed by UN Women. In several statements, Ms. Bachelet has reiterated her commitment to making UN Women the true voice for women by pledging to address issues urgently, with wisdom and realism. WEDO and the GEAR Campaign look forward to working with Michelle Bachelet to support her in achieving the goals she has set forth for UN Women.

Building on the momentum of the creation of UN Women, as well as the Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York in mid-September, WEDO hosted a panel discussion posing the question: How can UN Women contribute to the realization of Sustainable Development goals? The panelists included long time WEDO partner, Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL), and Joanne Sandler of UNIFEM- now part of UN Women; WEDO Board member, Soon-Young Yoon, moderated the panel and WEDO's GEAR lead Rachel Harris offered a short overview.

"Organize! Organize! Organize!" were the first words Ms. Bunch uttered from her years of experience in advocacy at the United Nations, particularly for improvements to the UN's gender equality architecture. She encouraged participants to be strategic and take this unique opportunity to put their issues on the agenda of UN Women. She stressed that through organizing efforts, all of the 8 MDGs have been expanded to include women's empowerment and gender equality - not only as cross-cutting issues but as prerequisites to effectively achieving these goals. It was also through the sustained and multi-level strategic organizing efforts of civil society that UN Women has been formed. Therefore, such organizing efforts must be continued and strengthened if we want sustainable development on the agenda of UN Women.

Ms. Sandler similarly focused on actions civil society can take now during the transition to UN Women. She emphasized that civil society, particularly women's organizations, must be ready to meet the challenges that UN Women will encounter in terms of resource mobilization, improved coordination of gender mainstreaming among UN organizations, and increased country level programmatic activities for gender equality and women's empowerment. While pushing for UN Women to have a coordinating role, Ms. Sandler declared that we must ensure that UN Women remains accountable to the women's movement and does not become accountable for all of the gender equality issues that UN programs and processes are already supposed to be doing. She stressed that UN Women must hear an upwelling of women's organizations working on sustainable development to bring that to the agenda of UN Women.

Overall, the event, occurring a day after former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet was appointed as the head of UN Women, successfully introduced civil society to how it can become involved in UN Women in a meaningful way.

Inside WEDO

The WEDO team is celebrating!

Welcome to Astrid Moquete-Blomstrom! At 7lbs 6oz, Astrid arrived on Saturday, September 18th, just after 7pm. New mom Eleanor Blomstrom, WEDO's Sustainable Development and Climate Change Coordinator, and her family are all healthy and happy!

Congratulations to Natalia Kostus! Natalia, a project manager at WEDO, got engaged in October! They have not yet set dates but anticipate organizing celebrations both here in the U.S. as well as in Poland, native country to both.

Hooray for Finance Manager Ugoagha (Jessica) Awa! With WEDO as a finance assistant for the last several years, she accepted a promotion to be our Finance Manager in September. She is doing a great job keeping us organized and on budget!

Sincere thanks to our fabulous Program Fellow and Autumn intern:

May Akale, originally from Cameroon, joined the organization in August for a five-month Fellowship. She has taken the lead on major projects such as assessment of WEDO's 50/50 Campaign, co-authoring the GEAR Campaign toolkit and much more. She also supports the climate change work.

Miriam Ott, from Germany, has been assisting the program team with all logistical and substantive arrangements for the UNFCCC climate talks. She's contributed to research on gender equality, climate change and the green economy. Currently a second year student at NYU, she's pursuing a Master's in International Relations.

WEDO is deeply appreciative of all its interns' passion, commitment, sense of humor and great work ethic.