The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs

Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) - "One UN Pilots" Project

WEDO, an international advocacy organization working to incorporate gender equality into global policies, seeks a team of about 3 students to review, assess and analyze the One United Nations (One UN) pilot projects in Vietnam and Tanzania from a gender perspective in order to document the current status of the One UN reform, as well as compile civilsociety's recommendations for a stronger gender integration into the UN "Delivering as One" process moving forward. The overall objective is to assess from an NGO standpoint, how gender (including civil society'sparticipation) is being dealt with in the "new" UN pilot projects currently ongoing in eight countries -Cape Verde, Albania, Pakistan, Mozambique, Uruguay, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam, then make recommendations.

WEDO has been centrally engaged in the UN reform process since its inception. In February 2006, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan convened a High-level Panel on System-Wide Coherence to explore how the UN system could be strengthened in terms of coherence and coordination in the areas of development, humanitarian affairs and the environment. After women from around the world pressure the UN to better address gender equality in the reform process, a UN high-level panel on Coherence made recommendations that, if adopted by governments, could make the UN system much better equipped to address women's rights, concerns and needs.

The Panel's 52-page reportentitled "Delivering As One" was released in November 2006. It concluded that the UN is fragmented, and as currently structured, it will not be able to meet many of its development objectives. It called for a series of changes at both the global and country level. One of the far reaching recommendations of the Panel was to strengthen the UN development cooperation system so that it can in fact deliver as one at the country level. "Delivering as One" aims at consolidating UN agencies' support/development assistance in countries for improved coordination, better resource management, efficiency and result-oriented programming. It was decided that the "One UN" approach will be piloted in a number of countries first and then gradually in other countries. This research project mainly will focus on two of the 8 pilot countries.

As an international advocacy organization focusing on women, WEDO believes that it is important to engage in the pilot projects at this early stage to make sure that the commitment to gender equality is strong, and that women's voices, experiences and perspectives are incorporated in the national plan and activities to achieve real, positive results for women in these countries. It would be good to identify and document both successful approaches as well as challenges faced in integrating gender into the One UN programming. Gender equality must be part of the UN reform process, in line with the Aid Effectiveness agenda and the Paris Declaration.

Learning from the pilot countries will be useful to many of the women's organizations in the network, particularly where there is an active UN presence on the ground.  And from a global development policy perspective, the learning will be critical as these models are expanded and replicated in other countries. [Projects are at various stages of development on a country by country basis.]

Many countries have recently expressed interest in becoming a "pilot country" for "Delivering as One" ... so the One UN project is expected to expand beyond the original eight countries, and to take a more a dynamic dimension over the next year. Our findings will be useful to organizations, academics, country officials, etc as the process moves forward.

The research:

• Documented best practices, challenges and lessons learned (focusing on gender) in Tanzania and Vietnam to allow a possibility of replication in other pilot countries (advocacy documents);
• Reviewed the development of the "One UN" focusing on gender from an NGO perspective (the UN will make its own assessment later in 2009, but it will from a government/UN perspective);
• Recommendations on how to use the UN space most strategically to advance women's priorities in a particular country were made;
• Ensured women's perspectives are heard and documented ; Establish a precedent of civil society involvement into the process;

 The team collaborated on desk research from WEDO's office and will help coordinate two consultations (one in Vietnam and one in Tanzania), while ensuring that recommendations/best practices from the consultations/meetings are fed into the reports. Deliverables  included 2 reports/case studies that will be used as advocacy documents by organizations involved in the UN reform process. Two fact sheets would also be produced (based on the research findings) and short summaries of the One UN Pilot projects in other countries could be developed for the WEDO website.   

The team reported to the Genderand Governance Program Coordinator but would work closely with the G&G Program associate and other colleagues as necessary. The project  mainly had an international focus, and deliverables were designed to support WEDO's work on Governance. It gave students interested in NGO work the opportunity to collaborate with a range of international partners including women's groups, UN agencies and country's officials working on the United Nations reform. 

Core Documents

Additional Documents