General Contribution to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), 2015 - 2017

UN-Women has a triple mandate at normative, operational and coordination levels:

• To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the General Assembly and the Security Council in their deliberations and formulation of policies, global standards and norms on gender equality.
• To support Member States in implementing these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.
• To hold the United Nations system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress. The instrument used is the UN System Wide Action Plan (SWAP) for gender equality

UN-Women’s priorities and activities, namely the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment, correspond perfectly with the Swiss strategic priorities as outlined in the Federal Council’s Bill to Parliament on International Cooperation 2013 – 2016, where gender equality is anchored as a transversal theme, as well as the SDC Gender Equality Policy. As a UN Member State, Switzerland committed itself to the goals contained in the mandate of UN-Women. Moreover, this coherence is even strengthened by the recent decision of the Federal Council on the Swiss position in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which advocates for a stand-alone goal on gender equality, which is also mentioned as a transversal issue in the other goals.

• Increased women leadership and political participation through gender responsive constitutional reforms.
• Increased access of women to economic empowerment opportunities (productive resources, decent work) promoted through gender sensitive national development strategies and labour laws amendments.
• Increased adoption of Women’s Empowerment Principles within private companies through strengthened partnerships in 124 companies.
• Improved coordination at country levels to expand access to health, justice, police and shelter services for women and girls victims of violence.
• Gender responsive peace building promoted through strengthened women leadership in peace, security and humanitarian response and women participation at the negotiating table.
• Increased governance towards gender equality through national planning documents incorporating priorities and budget on gender equality and women’s empowerment in 19 countries.
  

Through the strong and persistent policy dialog with UN-Women in regards to institutional efficiency, UN reform, the quadrennial comprehensive policy review (QCPR), development effectiveness and delivery of development results, Switzerland was able to influence the conception of the updated strategic plan, regional architecture and evaluation policy. Switzerland also influenced the operational strategies in such areas as economic and political empowerment and gender responsive national planning and budgeting, and ending violence against women. Through regular Swiss interventions, the partnership of UN-Women with the World Bank was strengthened and expanded. SDC support enabled the strengthening of field staff in results based management and evaluation. Moreover, thanks to the good cooperation between Switzerland and UN-Women, progress in the normative areas was made, such as by strengthening the chapter on gender equality and women’s empowerment as well as gender as a cross-cutting theme in the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio + 20) and by the defence of strong positions for the agreed conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women.

UN-Women achieves progress in the following results areas:

• Women lead and participate in decision-making at global, regional, national and local levels.
• Women, especially the poorest and most excluded, are economically empowered and benefit from development
• Women and girls live a life free from violence
• Governance and national planning fully reflect accountability for gender equality commitments and priorities

• Strengthened UN-Women responses for gender equality and women’s empowerment through active policy dialogue, strategic advice, joint statement at Executive Board and relevant negotiated decisions.
• Partnerships established with the Evaluation office to strengthen results-based management allowing to track development results and key achievements on the ground.
• SDC multi-bi Program approved on Women’s Political and Economic Empowerment and Gender Responsive Governance including increased cooperation with the World Bank
• First JPO placed in the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office to gain experience on monitoring and evaluation and contribute to strengthening the tracking of development results.
  

Switzerland is the fifth donor as of December 2014. Depending on the contributions of other countries, this position may slightly change in 2016.

In descending order: Finland, United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, United States, Australia, Belgium and all subsequent members states. Additional donations from the private sector and UN-Women national committees.

Switzerland regularly coordinates its positions with the UN group of countries of the Western Europe and other groups (WEOG). In the Executive Board, it also establishes alliances with interested countries outside the WEOG group for joint positions in statements and in the negotiations. Switzerland is member of the Utstein Group of 13 like-minded donor countries who exchange on strategic questions and coordinate their positions as far as possible.

Fase 19 01.01.2015 - 31.12.2017   (Completed)