MDG 3 Champion Torch for UNIFEM head
UNIFEM’s Executive Director Inés Alberdi is the latest recipient of the MDG3 Champion Torch as part of the global campaign to promote gender equality. More than 100 such torches will travel across the world in the run-up to an international meet on MDGs later this year.
United Nations, New York: The head of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has become the latest recipient of the MDG3 Champion Torch, committing the agency to “doing something extra” in support of gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Launched in Copenhagen on March 7 this year, the MDG3 Champion Torch campaign symbolises Denmark’s global call to action on gender equality — goal number three in the set of anti-poverty targets that world leaders have pledged to try to achieve by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
More than 100 MDG3 Torches will travel around the world in the run-up to the high-level meeting on MDGs to be convened at the UN on September 25, 2008.
- MDG3 Champion Torch / Photo credit: World Bank
Torchbearers will include representatives of governments, the private sector, civil society, the media, individuals from North and South, and international organisations.
Accepting the Torch, UNIFEM Executive Director Inés Alberdi told a news conference in New York that “achieving gender equality is indeed pivotal to all other Millennium Development Goals.”
To receive an MDG3 Champion Torch is to make a specific commitment, she noted. “I pledge to focus on the priorities that Member States have identified as key to their efforts to advance gender equality in their countries.”
Special focus on Africa
Specifically, she committed to addressing the feminisation of poverty, particularly in Africa.
“UNIFEM will build on initiatives that it is currently undertaking and step up its advocacy and support to enhance African women’s economic security and rights,” she said.
Noting that women’s political participation is a key indicator of gender equality, she said UNIFEM will strengthen its work to support women “to act as an effective constituency, to achieve high-level political positions and to make a difference on issues related to gender equality.”
Men as key partners
Alberdi, who took up her current post just one week ago, called violence against women “the missing MDG target,” and said responses to date have missed two critical ingredients — money and men.
As the manager of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, she pledged that UNIFEM will make every effort to ensure that the Fund — which provides urgently needed resources to local organisations, governments and the UN system — will grow from its resource base of $5 million in grants in 2007 to a $100-million fund by 2015.
UNIFEM will also “vigorously reach out to men as key partners,” she said.
“Reaching out to men in all walks of life will be central to our efforts as we ensure that we continue to address violence against women as both a cause and a consequence of HIV/AIDS,” she added.
Ambassador Carsten Staur of Denmark lauded UNIFEM, calling it “a trusted partner who carries out important work.
“We see a lot of merit in the activities of UNIFEM in combating violence against women, in addressing the feminisation of HIV and AIDS and we also see a lot of effort from UNIFEM in working towards the reduction of poverty on women and to empower women politically, socially and legally. These are all essential points in achieving the MDGS,” Staur said.
At September’s MDG meeting, all commitments will be presented to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is to receive the last MDG3 Torch.
