UN WOMEN
UN WOMEN
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system, which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment:
Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW)
International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW)
Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI)
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
The main roles of UN Women are:
- To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms.
- To help Member States to implement these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.
- To hold the UN system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress.
Actions
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Date: 25 May 2013 | Action Type: Awareness Raising
Cape Town, South AfricaOn the 25th of May, over 400 women and men, each wearing something orange, gathered at Look Out Hill, in the Khayelitsha Township, to mark “Orange Day”, . |
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Action Type: Awareness Raising
In South Africa, a woman is raped every 26 seconds; 1 in 4 women are victims of domestic violence and every 6 hours a woman is killed by her intimate partner. These are the statistics that are depicted on a mural in Khayelitsha that was unveiled at an event on the 31st of May 2013. |
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Date: 11 May 2013 | Location: Seneca Falls, United States | Action Type: Awareness Raising
While many countries around the world celebrate Mother’s Day, on 12 May, a group of United Nations staff and their friends will ride their motorcycles from the United Nations headquarters in New York City to Seneca Falls Women’s Rights National Park, in upstate New York. |
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Date: 8 March 2013 | Action Type: Awareness Raising
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