In March 2006, South North Development Monitor published an article by Martin Khor, entitled: United Nations: Developed countries press for big changes in UN structure. The article was subsequently circulated by Global Policy Forum. (http://www.globalpolicy.org/reform/docs00/0328bigchanges.htm)
Many women looking at the UN reform debate welcomed the article, which emphasized the failure by the major contributors' papers to address the concerns of developing countries. Two months later, it seems there is another side of the debate that is also getting little attention. Women are not being heard: when a few speak, what they are saying is not reaching the decision-makers, nor the communities that should be exerting influence on the course of UN reform. We will be grateful if you can lend a hand to circulate the present article on this topic, through your networks and links.
As Martin Khor has shown, the debate has produced various scenarios, most of which amount to a call for a slimming down of the roster of UN agencies to "three pillars": for development, humanitarian and environmental affairs (with some specialized agencies continuing as "centres of excellence" or "think tanks"). Where are women in the pillars? In every paper cited by Khor, women's concerns, if they are mentioned at all, are to be swallowed up into one super-agency that will constitute the "development pillar."
Our view is that gender and women's rights are a vital dimension at the core, not only of development, humanitarian assistance and the environment, but also the headline events and strategic concerns of our time that surround and overreach these subjects: the intractability of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; persistent conflicts and troubled peace building (the agonies of rape and starvation in Darfur, the dilemma of the Middle East, and the endless misery of daily life in Iraq are only three of the most reported); the struggle over fundamentalisms and terror; the depletion of our Earth's ability to nurture us that increases the suffering of the poor of every continent - with the destruction of forests, wetlands and fisheries, and the exacerbated burden of care that is the responsibility of women everywhere; and the accelerating pace of health crises and humanitarian emergencies. This paper raises four issues that we feel need to be discussed in the UN reform debate
- The reform debate has been unrealistically confined, and directed to limit the UN's reach to three areas. These are only a partial identification of the concerns of the world's people. Within this limited perspective, the place of women has been further ghettoized into just one of these. The reform process, and specifically the High-level Coherence Panel, is failing to redress these shortcomings, despite the clear instructions of the General Assembly and the Secretary General, and despite the expressed views of gender equity advocates around the world.
- Gender is not "one sector among many." It is a cross-cutting dimension of peace, development and the survival of our planet - it cannot be shunted out of this debate.
- It is time the participants committed to a Fourth Pillar - an effective UN agency for women to champion the integration of the dimension of gender throughout the UN's work - in peacekeeping and humanitarian work, in development and justice, in the environment and human health.
- This agency must be properly resourced, able to act as an equal partner, and designed to reflect the ways its constituency works: the direct, grassroots and practical style that the best women's campaigns have shown the world, within and around the UN. (We can think of women's role in peace campaigns like Northern Ireland, and the Bougainville/PNG conflict; the role of grandmothers taking up the support of the HIV/AIDS orphans of southern Africa, the link between women and forest renewal in the work of Wangari Maathai, among many.) A new-style women's agency would be a leader in the imagination of the UN.
The UN reform process needs to get serious about this. It is one of the vital questions at the heart of development, peace and justice. If it does not, the process will confirm in the minds of the world's people who witness it that it is rushing headlong down a side road. While there are those in the rich countries who have been saying that the UN must "reform or die", we say, make this process the beginning of real reform, or it is the people who look to the UN for hope who will die.
Is the reform process looking at the vital questions?
The "prime venue and vehicle for reforming the operational activities of the UN as part of the broad UN reform process" is, as Khor states, the high-level "Coherence Panel", named by Secretary General Kofi Annan on 16 February 2006.
But the brief of the Panel looks limited, by contrast with the expectations for reform. It is not being asked to look broadly at the UN's mandate and capability to build peace and justice for the world's women, men and children, even though the seminal document In Larger Freedom (March 2005) prepared for the 60th General Assembly and claimed as the reform's guiding prospectus, did take such a broad, strategic view.
As Khor has pointed out, the Panel's schedule is alarmingly rushed. Its first meeting was held in early April, few additional meetings are planned, and it is expected to complete its report by August for discussion at the General Assembly in September.
"To set such a punishing deadline for a panel of very busy people to come out with a report proposing changes on such a complex set of issues is both extremely ambitious and surprising, to say the least. Among other things, the panel is to propose how in future the UN and its agencies will operate on the ground at national level as well as at the top at the headquarters level, and also examine how funds to all the organisations and at the ground will be coordinated and channeled…"
Not only is the Panel limited to its three themes; further, only the narrowest field of focus has been set - basically operational efficiency and technical support, with gender, conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction, and domestic governance relegated to a list of so-called "niche" areas. As Khor explains:
"In terms of issues that the UN should be involved in, a reading of the papers [from the rich countries] and speeches of the reform advocates indicate that the UN's development work will in future comprise mainly technical assistance, focusing on the poorer countries,…. complemented by specialized agencies in the area of health, food and labour standards.
"In this scenario, the UN's work in development policy (inter-governmental consensus building, research, and policy advice and technical assistance to developing countries) is not given any prominence (or even any mention, in the case of some of the papers). This is an area which may diminish, if not disappear, in the scenario of the advocates, as they view the Bretton Woods institutions or the WTO as having a "comparative advantage" in this area."
The rush to produce a reform proposal, together with the focus on operational efficiency, highlights the dangerous flaw in the Panel's brief. How can a major fix of the UN's structure be constructed on a foundation of discussion that is this partial and constrained?
In Larger Freedom addressed human rights, democracy and the rule of law, peace and security, and development, and the necessity to strengthen the UN to achieve for all people freedom from want and from fear, as well as the freedom to live in dignity. This agenda made room for the themes of diversity, gender equality and social inclusiveness.
But the broad and bold perspective of 2005 was curbed when the time came to set the agenda for "a strengthened UN."
"Could try harder"
The Coherence Panel came into existence as a result of instructions of the General Assembly 60th Session in September 2005. That session directed Secretary General Kofi Annan to report back in six months time on his creation of the High-level Panel to spearhead UN reform, and to review the mandates of UN agencies to guide the Panel in its work. Annan's report of March 2006 (Mandating and Delivering http://www.un.org/mandatereview/0628304.pdf) did include gender in its review; the document provides a succinct report card on the UN's results in integrating gender dimensions into its structures and operations. It specifically points to a failure to turn commitments into action: "[Gender] mandates … call on all relevant parts of the system to take concrete action to promote gender equality, but they rarely specify action required from particular entities, resulting in both duplication and gaps in support for the implementation of global commitments on gender equality." It singles out the failure to strengthen Member States' "capacity to mainstream gender issues at the national level." Overall, the report gives a low grade, for effort as well as achievement.
Encouragingly, therefore, the report engages the review process to examine "progress in the implementation of commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming, including the status of the institutional architecture and resource allocation in this area, as well as the mechanisms in place to ensure coherence and coordination across the system." In that spirit, the SG stated:
"I will ask the High-level Panel on System-wide Coherence to include in its work an assessment of how gender equality, including through gender mainstreaming, can be better and more fully addressed in the work of the United Nations, particularly in its operational activities on the ground." (para 131)
Given this engagement, it is disturbing that the Panel's terms of reference make no mention of the issue of gender, even though the SG's report stated that, "Gender equality and the empowerment of women are among those issues that, like the environment, peacebuilding and human rights, have been increasingly cutting across the work of the Organization" (para. 125). Noting the creation of specific international structures to mainstream and strengthen environment, peace and human rights work, the report explicitly stated:
"Gender-related issues deserve equal attention. The 2005 Summit Outcome reiterates that "progress for women is progress for all" and reflects the commitments of Member States to "strengthen the capabilities of the United Nations system in the area of gender". (para. 126)
Today it appears neither the Panel, nor the principal countries drafting proposals for its consideration (those reviewed in Khor's paper) have read Mandating and Delivering. Thus far, the Panel has not held consultations on gender, and has not made a commitment to bring gender into sharp focus in its deliberations or its proposals. The 6 April inaugural meeting of the Panel with Member States did not place gender on its agenda.
As news of this embarrassing omission has reached women, civil society organizations have raised a hue and cry. Three international women's organizations wrote to the Panel immediately after the 6 April meeting, calling on it to "integrate gender as a cross-cutting issue into its program of work and make strong recommendations in its final report for more effective UN mechanisms to achieve gender equality in development, humanitarian affairs, and environment, as well as in human rights and peace-keeping." (http://www.wedo.org/library.aspx?ResourceID=106)
Two weeks later, a delegation of South Asian women met with Panel Co-Chair Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, on 22 April 2006. The group called on Aziz to ensure that the Panel holds consultations with women's organizations and national machineries, and to facilitate a special gender hearing in Pakistan before the Coherence Panel. Unpromisingly, the only commitment Aziz made was that he "would look into the possibility" of holding a special gender hearing. However, even at this point he warned that the schedule of the panel may be too tight to allow for any such addition. Aziz expressed confidence that the reforms would strengthen the role of a gender agency, and stated that he was "200 percent committed to gender equality." But what did Aziz confide about his own perspective on how women have scored so far in the world organization? In his view, he said, women have not used their leverage adequately, to mobilize women's groups more broadly. It looks like Aziz is pointing the finger at the women's structures themselves.
This does not augur well. It does not seem probable that the Panel Co-Chair has any intention to radically transform the debate with respect to gender.
Within the next ten days, the response of women's groups accelerated. On 3 May a group of representatives of a broad range of NGO networks met with Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss the need for reform proposals to address the gender architecture. Annan, like Aziz before him, promised consideration but extended a caution. "It would be difficult to advocate for the creation of a new independent women's agency at this time," he warned, "in part because of expected government resistance."
The UN structures at the top levels have set out their position. The message is familiar: "It is not yet time." Fortunately, the expanding networks of women's organizations joining this discussion have not been put off. The challenge to persuade national governments, and the equally important one to move the mindset of the Coherence Panel itself, has been taken up in a campaign of Internet organizing to seize this moment. Communications via network briefing notes in regions from the Pacific to the Caribbean are diffusing the message that "at a time of fast-paced UN reform" this is the moment to "take action critical to advancing gender equality".1 Too often these women have been told that the organizational changes they need are not yet appropriate, or feasible, or that the time is not yet ripe. They are familiar with the admonition to wait for now, and to abide by the agenda as set out by those in charge. They are equally familiar with the disappointing results of reform processes that result in another set of recommendations, promises and targets, but no teeth. The lesson they have drawn from repeated let-downs is that change will come only when women demand a hearing, and in this case, that UN reform, like mainstreaming, needs a champion for the cause of women's rights.
There is another question that begs asking. Why has little or nothing been heard from advocates inside the UN about the disregard of gender in the reform discussion? The reason does not lie in a lack of discontent. But women inside the UN agencies, whether they work in one of the under-funded gender mandate units, or elsewhere, are hesitant to speak up. They know that under the banner of "coherence", some agencies are going to disappear, and some staff jobs will disappear. The spectre of turf wars looms, and wherever there is a proliferation of agencies with overlapping mandates and inadequate budgets, the atmosphere of embattlement and tension is thick. Staff with careers and pensions to preserve are afraid. If staff are to be reassured enough to join the debate, the SG needs to declare a season of amnesty, to enable them to participate without fear of reprisal. The UN needs to tell its staff and management that no reprisal will be tolerated against any person who joins the reform discussion, whether publicly or informally.
Beyond this, individual agencies should not hesitate to mobilize their own staff and constituencies, to campaign for a structure that meets the needs of women. An opportunity exists now to overcome the handicaps of poverty and bureaucracy that have impeded the championing of women's rights and the true mainstreaming of gender concerns into every area of UN work - if, and this is a big if, the agenda can be opened up.
Calendar for a Fourth Pillar: closing the "commitment gap"
The High-level Panel is to report to the General Assembly by September 2006. But we do not need to hold our breath until then to discern whether gender will be taken seriously. If the Panel is to provide a proposal that keeps the promise of Mandating and Delivering, it needs to take some steps along the way. A serious process would need first, to listen to views from those who are working for gender equity. This means the Panel must announce its willingness to hold a special hearing on gender, without conditions, and allocate sufficient support and time to make this hearing meaningful. If a calendar for such a hearing is not announced within the next month, there is little hope it can be meaningful, and there can be little expectation that the input on the dimension of gender will be adequate to the needs of a serious review. If it is not possible to hold a hearing on gender before the Panel reports in September, any belief that the reform process as now constituted is going to take substantial steps to beef up gender in the UN structure appears naïve.
Second, the Panel would need to announce a call for proposals to define the role and status of an agency that will be capable of championing gender equity so as to ensure real mainstreaming in the UN country programmes. This would include commissioning or assisting the preparation of a core paper on the future gender architecture. It is evident from the expressions of concern of a growing corps of advocates, and the circumspect lobbying from within, that a fair gender hearing will see calls for this new architecture. If the reform process fails to facilitate this exercise, it will not have addressed the issue.
Third, it should announce the integration of the above steps into the calendar already fixed from now to the September 2006 General Assembly. These include:
- A series of two-to-three consultative "field visits" by the Panel, set for Mozambique, Islamabad, and a possible third site. These visits should be defined to accommodate the gender hearing or hearings.
- A second meeting of the full Panel in June, in Geneva. The Gender Fourth Pillar should appear on the agenda and in the report of this meeting.
- The ECOSOC session of July, in which the Panel is to hold further consultation with member states. This occasion should enable the Panel to table for endorsement a commitment to the creation of a Fourth Pillar, in the medium term.
- A draft report of the Panel, ready for consideration prior to the General Assembly Session of September 2006. The report should envisage the creation, in the medium term, without the hindrance of the short-term deadlines, of a stand-alone, core-funded, agency for women's rights and empowerment, on the scale of an agency such as UNICEF. The report should endorse the agency as a Fourth Pillar, tasked to champion and assist genuine mainstreaming of gender concerns throughout the UN system.
Gender has not made it to the mainstream
The gender-and-development alignment within the UN, broadly defined, adopted the strategy called gender mainstreaming in the "Nairobi period", the process around the 1985 World Conference on Women, and further articulated it ten years later around the Beijing conference period. The identification of this concept stemmed from the recognition of a persistent paradox: the characteristic meagerness of resources accorded to national and global women's machineries, set against the pervasive, dramatic and fundamental nature of gender equity issues and injustices. The only way that such an enormous mismatch can be addressed is via a strategy that makes the responsibility for gender justice that of every level of government and every structure of global cooperation - mainstreaming gender into every context where women and men are present. But the recognition of the need to mainstream gender advocacy is a far cry from implementation.
One of the earliest lessons from the struggle to put mainstreaming into practice was that the strategy is doomed if there is not a powerful agency to champion it. This lesson is true at every level, from national government to UN country office, to the international arena. Learning to incorporate gender awareness into every part of social action, and teaching this approach to policy makers and practitioners in every domain, requires skills and resources. In the decade since Beijing, reviews of mainstreaming in areas as diverse as peacekeeping, macroeconomic management, and health care have reached similar conclusions: gender concerns remain ghettoized in tiny pockets of interest, but are absent from the main table and whenever the budget is discussed. Why? Because the people who have expertise in gender-aware practice are few in number, and under resourced; the agencies charged with fostering good practice suffer from inadequate technical capacity for analysis of the gendered fault lines in each discipline. The institutions have limited technical capacity to support the specialized skills needed. And in a vicious cycle sparked by the crippling of gender institutions, the mainstream policy bodies of the UN and the Member States rarely encounter a "champion" of change, and can therefore comfortably forget the whole matter in their day-to-day work. (NGOs in the UN-linked Millennium+5 Network call this the "commitment gap" - the fall-off between ratification and implementation.)
Distressingly at this time, the UN reform process presents another instance of this common memory lapse. Watching events, the Association for Women's rights in Development reported,
"Current initiatives to reform the UN have women wondering if the organization is not merely paying lip service to the principle of gender equality. The fact that only three of the 15 members of the Coherence Panel are women lends credence to this suspicion. Two hundred and forty women from all over the world who attended [the 2006] UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) sent an open letter to the UN expressing their discontent: 'We are disappointed and frankly outraged that gender equality and strengthening the women's machineries within the UN system are barely noted, and are not addressed as a central part of the reform agenda. Again, we must ask how it can be that more than ten years after the commitment to gender parity at the Beijing Conference, the UN is still offering only token representation of women on critical committees, high level expert panels and in senior positions within the organization."2
Once again, then, gender has not been put on the table where the decisions are being made.
Almost mainstream is not enough
The era of the Millennium Declaration has presented us with the bitterest images of human suffering in the context of gender inequity. Two examples can be used to illustrate.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a manifestation of the power imbalance between women and men - women's inability to negotiate safe sex - played out with the most devastating of consequences: from the ravaging of the African continent, and overwhelmingly its women, to the emerging risk of similar catastrophe in the rising crisis in Asia and Eastern Europe. Women have become the group with the fastest-growing rate of new infections, and in the major sites, marriage itself has become the greatest risk factor - a pairing of the biological vulnerability of women with the double standard in sexual behaviour.
But equally, the stubborn growth of the pandemic is a manifestation of the failure of the UN system, and the global health and humanitarian aid systems as a whole, to meet women's needs - in practical terms, on the ground. Look at the affordable, feasible goal of halting mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the virus through the provision of antiretrovirals. The target set by the UN General Assembly in 2001 aimed to reduce the proportion of HIV-positive infants by 20 per cent by 2005, and by 50 per cent in 2010. The 2005 target was not met, in any region of the developing world. Despite an objective of full access, fewer than 10 percent of HIV-positive women in developing countries got antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy and childbirth between 2003 and 2005.
In Cambodia, despite knowledge of the prevention of MTCT approach, and major infusions of drugs into the system, UNFPA this year reports that one third of all new HIV infections are via the MTCT route (and another 42 percent occur from transmission by husbands to their wives). What is going wrong? The World Health Organization in its "3 by 5" report states "there is no evidence of a systemic gender bias in access to treatment…" although, "in a few cases far fewer women are accessing treatment than what would be expected given the extent of need. In Ethiopia, for instance, just over 30% of the adults on treatment are women, while the expected percent based on need would be closer to 55%."3
How often have we heard such statements - that the results reveal no bias? And, more crucially, where is the analysis of why clear, feasible targets are failing to be met? The mitigated success of the "3 by 5" campaign, like the pandemic as a whole, has been analysed by economists, epidemiologists, journalists and NGO campaigners. And yet in all this analysis, no UN agency has focused its attention on how it is that women can be missed and let down by programmes that are able to attract funds but cannot get those funds to the doorsteps where they are needed. No "mainstream" agency has laid out the basic, ineluctable truth that AIDS is a gender issue, and that until the world understands and acts on this understanding, neither HIV/AIDS nor gender inequity will be resolved. No organization has had the daring to state, with the unflinching honesty of SG Annan's Special Envoy Stephen Lewis, that the technical fixes may not be enough to beat the virus:
In principle, the majority of such women will one day fall under public antiretroviral treatment through their ministries of health. But there's no guarantee of when, or if, that day will dawn. It's entirely possible that men will be at the front of the bus. Everything proceeds at a glacial pace when responding to the needs and rights of women. (http://www.msmagazine.com/fall2004/microbicides.asp)
Women need an agency that takes them as its core concern, and has the resources to ensure that meeting their specific needs, in ways that work for them, is the perspective at the heart of every strategy, agency and initiative to fight HIV/AIDS - be it health initiatives, economic schemes, political campaigns or cultural programmes.
An example that is more broadly drawn but equally devastating arises from the transformation in the nature of conflicts since the end of the two-superpower era to "new types of war", such as the war on terror and multilateral state interventions, associated with the breakdown of order, livelihood systems and social norms. The effects of such social breakdown are by definition visited on civilians, and arguably strike women as caregivers at least as severely as men. But what recognition of this reality is brought to bear on the high-profile negotiations of settlements? Even when women are the direct victims of state-sponsored violence by troops or by officially sanctioned militias that engage in systematic assault on the female population as a deliberate weapon of ethnic cleansing - as has been seen in the Balkan wars and the current Sudanese conflict, to name only two - where do we see a sustained effort to give women representation at the peace table?
We have no agency in the UN that can stand as the champion of an historic campaign to create recognition that there is a clear, legitimate interest of women in the consequences of war and the struggle for peace. In the drawn-out processes of rebuilding war-ravaged societies, women can play a crucial role in creating a new model of participation and public choice. But who will fight to bring this conception of governance to the stage? The model will not grow to reality with the quality of implementation of "gender mainstreaming" as we now know it. We can look at the example of Iraq, where the military, political and technical support of powerful nations and UN agencies has been poured into reconstruction. In the complex negotiations to establish a governance structure, every sectarian interest group is represented. But there is no visible effort to ensure an autonomous voice of women - because there is an evident belief that gender matters come later, after the establishment of security and stability. The framework of mainstream governance theory has no place for the hypothesis that the very absence of female voices is a factor that contributes to instability, permanent tension, and the death of communities.
Examples of the social consequences of women's exclusion from leadership abound. This month the UN has once again admitted that in West Africa refugee women and girls are under pressure to trade sex for food rations, under the watch of its relief agencies, and sometimes by its staff. But although this scandal has been exposed and deplored for more than four years now, no strategy has been identified to root out its causes. It is time to state, in loud and clear terms, that no empowerment of women has taken place in the humanitarian relief system; on the contrary, the structure has systematically provided a means to subject women most effectively to violence and abuse. The structures are dominated by men in power, in armed groups and in control of rationed resources. A concerted attack on this set-up would involve the systematic recruitment of women into peace-keeping forces, a change in the style and ethos of such forces, and a massive induction of women into relief and rehabilitation agencies. What global agency will espouse the adoption of such strategies, and mobilize the resources to put them into action?
Women who have called for such strategies worked for the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (October 2000). Among other measures, the resolution called for "an increase in the participation of women at decision-making levels in conflict resolution and peace processes" and in every other pertinent body, including "more women as special representatives and envoys," and expansion of "the role and contribution of women in United Nations field-based operations, and especially among military observers, civilian police, human rights and humanitarian personnel." Yet today, in 2006, these measures remain inoperative. Pacific women, who since 2000 in several countries experienced serious armed conflicts and a heightened incidence of violence against women, have used every forum at their disposal to call for action on 1325, including Commonwealth and UN events. Their calls remain unanswered. The current discussion of UN reform is providing a setting in which a growing dissatisfaction with the reality of implementation is being expressed. There is a rising conviction that in these and other situations, one fatal handicap has been the lack of a powerful agency to collect and give voice to the needs and solutions women want. They are calling for an effective agency: not a poor and under-funded "niche" entity that provides nothing but a fig-leaf of decency for the UN while practical action suffers. Not an agency that must spend 80 percent of its time in sales campaigns to raise paltry operating funds, because the UN structure does not see fit to place gender equity at the core of its budget priorities.
An effective agency, born of experience
More and more voices are saying that the solution is not simply to cluster together the existing, hobbled agencies, nor to shunt gender matters onto a specialized agency that focuses on one sphere of gender concerns, such as reproductive health. Nor is gender to be confined to one part of UN work, in development. Groups active in every sphere have demonstrated that gender issues are present in the organic constitution of peace and conflict, the nature of epidemics, and the relationship of human communities to the environment.
While the issues are expressed with many voices, on broad and strategic concerns, the reform context has provided a moment for one common expression: as ever, women need to speak from all of their concerns and constituencies - and they need one place where they can do this to reach the global community. A growing number are calling for an agency that is resourced to spearhead their cause, consistently and in every domain. The nature of this agency, in design and detail, is precisely the topic that the Coherence Panel should place on its programme. The Panel needs hearings on this; it needs to ask for the views of women, and all who have been struggling for years to achieve gender equality without the appropriate machinery in place. This is the expertise the Panel needs to summon.
As the UN reform agenda is honed, the delegates at the rostrum are being alerted to their obligations. They are susceptible to the views of their constituencies. And UN officials, in their heart of hearts, know that a major discussion of the gender architecture cannot now be avoided. The issues on the table are not ones that will be met by a technical, quick-fix, because daily realities demonstrate that something more fundamental is needed. At the press briefing for the 6 April Panel session, Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown acknowledged the urgency of more deep-going reform than has already been accomplished. Recognizing the inefficacy of previous, partial efforts, he conceded, "The world has changed faster than the UN."
It is time for the UN to begin to move in pace with the world, and the people of the world.
Any comments may be sent to AsiaWOMENet at: nilamori@gmail.com
Notes
-
See, for example, newslinks of African Democracy Forum, Association for Women's Rights in Development, Baha'i International Community, BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights, Center for Women's Global Leadership, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, International Center for Research on Women, International Planned Parenthood Federation-Western Hemisphere, International Women's Tribune Center, Pacific Women's Information Network , Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Women's Environment and Development Organization, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. An Open Letter on Women & UN Reform to the Secretary General and Member States from NGOs present at the 50th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, March 6, 2006. Cited in (Kathambi Kinoti, Resource Net Friday File, Issue 269, April 7, 2006. AWID) "3 by 5" refers to the UN campaign to make antiretroviral treatment available to 3 million HIV-positive persons by 2005, described in: World Health Organization and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Treating 3 Million by 2005: Making It Happen, the WHO Strategy. Geneva, WHO 2003.
