Aid donors, governments and the UN have made many commitments to gender equality. Their actions have been less impressive. Across UN programmes, gender equality is vastly underfunded. When the UN Women agency was created in 2010, activists estimated that it needed at least a $1 billion budget (for comparison, total revenue for the children’s agency UNICEF was over $4.8 billion in 2016). Several years on, and donors have consistently failed to meet this target. UN Women’s total revenue for 2016 was under $335 million. Aid donors have repeatedly committed to what’s called “mainstreaming” gender across various global development efforts (to assess all policies, at all levels, for their different impacts on women and men). But their records are disappointing. And while the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, agreed in 2015, does include a goal to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls – it is the only one whose targets lack specific deadlines. Read more here.
Source: Open Democracy