Response to UK Government’s UN Women funding announcement: “a failure of ambition”

06/07/2011 10:03:00

Leading organisations, VSO, Christian Aid and the WI have warned today that the UK Government’s announcement of £10 million in annual funding for UN Women represents a failure of amition that was deeply disappointing for the billion women living in poverty around the world.

Six months after UN Women opened its doors, it has received just US$119 million in pledges towards the target of US$500 million agreed by the General Assembly less than a year ago.

The organisations have consistently called for the UK Government to provide £21 million in annual core funding for UN Women to enable it to start scaling up its operations and start tackling the causes of women’s inequality in the countries where it is desperately needed. This position was supported by 23 other leading charities including Christian Aid and the Women’s Institute in a letter sent to the Secretary of State yesterday.

Chief Executive of VSO, Marg Mayne, said:

“UN Women offers a chance to end the discrimination that means 70 per cent of the world’s poor are women. The failure of the international community to meet the funding target for this newest of agencies represents a failure of ambition and a lost opportunity to reduce the number of women facing poverty and violence.

“When UN Women was created we believed that donors finally would start matching their words with resources.  Alas, we have seen a race to the bottom with donors competing by how little they can give. Germany’s $1 million and the United States’ $6 million deserve particular mention.

“Andrew Mitchell has constantly said that this Government would lead international action to improve the lives of women and girls, yet only £10 million has been pledged to UN Women, an organisation specifically set up to do just this, while £888 million has been given to the World Bank this year - an organisation that by the Department for International Development’s (DFID) own assessment scored ‘poorly’ on its performance towards delivering gender equality.

“Contributing 11% of a budget that is just half of what the UN allocated to women’s equality under the previous arrangement is not a cause for celebration.
“As the Government has repeatedly acknowledged, investing in women and girls is the most cost-effective way to address global poverty. Educated women are less likely to die in childbirth, more likely to have fewer children and have fewer children die. Women who earn money, spend 90 per cent of it on food and education for their children, compared to men spending less than 40 per cent of their income on their family.

“The failure of UNIFEM – the previous UN fund for women which UN Women has replaced - was, in the Government’s own words, due to ‘constrained resources’. Yet it looks like donors have learnt nothing from the history books.

“VSO understands how important it is that UN Women delivers real results for women around the world. But we struggle to see how it will achieve its ambitious results agenda which includes bringing an end to rape being used as a weapon of war and strengthening the rights of women at work by improving legal protection for women in the informal labour market, without adequate funding.”

Melanie Ward, Senior UK Political Adviser at Christian Aid, said:

“The creation of UN Women is a once in a generation opportunity to tackle the gender discrimination which is the cause of so much poverty and suffering among women across the world.  A £10 million contribution from the UK may sound a lot but it is far from what is needed, especially when compared to the UK contribution to UNICEF, the children’s agency.  This news is very disappointing indeed.  It is difficult to see how such a low UK contribution matches the government’s stated ambition to put women at the heart of UK development policy.  With donor ambition so dangerously weak, UN Women risks falling at the first hurdle.”

Chair of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, Ruth Bond, said:

“We are disappointed that the UK Government has pledged just $10 million. UN Women holds so much hope for the world’s women, but it faces an uphill battle to deliver with less than a quarter of what it needs and just half of what was available for women’s equality within the UN system previously. We call on the Government to reconsider its pledge and increase it to £21 million. With just four years until the MDG deadline, it is important that the agency is properly resourced to help deliver on these ambitions.”

VSO’s YouGov research launched today shows that there is strong support from the UK public for addressing injustice experienced by women, with more than one in five saying it should be the top priority for UN Women, the second most important priority behind education . Addressing injustice is a key area that UN Women plans to work on – but without adequate support it won’t be able to tackle this issue.

Editor's notes

VSO has led the Godmothers Campaign which has galvanised the public’s support for the UK Government to contribute £21 million to UN Women. It has also been the lead organisation in campaigning for the establishment of the new UN agency for the past four years.

VSO is the leading international development charity that works through volunteers. Since 1958 more than 44,000 international volunteers have worked in over 120 countries. Today VSO has more than 1600 international volunteers and 250,000 national volunteers working in 44 countries around the world. With a focus on highly skilled professionals, national volunteering and youth volunteers, VSO’s work reaches 26 million people a year. This includes helping 14.6 million children to receive a better education, three million people to access better quality health care and two million poor and marginalised people to be able to earn a living. For more information visit www.vso.org.uk or @VSOUK or @VSOUKPress