Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.
The United Nations Foundation is a charitable organization headquartered in Washington, DC, that supports the United Nations and its activities. It was established in 1998 with a $1 billion gift to the United Nations by philanthropist Ted Turner, who believed the UN was crucial for addressing the world's problems. Originally primarily a grantmaker, the UN Foundation has evolved into a strategic partner to the UN, mobilizing support to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and help the UN address issues such as climate change, global health, gender equality, human rights, data and technology, peace, and humanitarian responses. The UN Foundation's main work occurs through building public-private partnerships, communities, initiatives, campaigns, and alliances to broaden support for the UN and solve global problems. The UN Foundation has helped build awareness and advocate for action on, among others, antimicrobial resistance, regional action on climate change, local implementation of the SDGs, as well as global campaigns such as Nothing But Nets against malaria, the Measles & Rubella Initiative, the Clean Cooking Alliance, Girl Up, Shot@Life, and the Digital Impact Alliance, among others. In March 2020, the UN Foundation was also a key founder of the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), helping to raise over $200 million USD within the first six weeks to support the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The United Nations Secretariat is one of the six major organs of the United Nations, with the others being (a) the General Assembly; (b) the Security Council; (c) the Economic and Social Council; (d) the defunct Trusteeship Council; and (e) the International Court of Justice. The Secretariat is the United Nations' executive arm. The Secretariat has an important role in setting the agenda for the deliberative and decision-making bodies of the UN, and the implementation of the decision of these bodies. The Secretary-General, who is appointed by the General Assembly, is the head of the secretariat.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were eight international development goals for the year 2015 that had been established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. These were based on the OECD DAC International Development Goals agreed by Development Ministers in the "Shaping the 21st Century Strategy". The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) succeeded the MDGs in 2016.
The Millennium Project was an initiative that focused on detailing the organizational means, operational priorities, and financing structures necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals or (MDGs). The goals are aimed at the reduction of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 world leaders had initiated the development of the MDGs and had set a completion date for the project of June 2005.
The United Nations Development Fund for Women was established in December 1976 originally as the Voluntary Fund for the United Nations Decade for Women in the International Women's Year. Its first director was Margaret C. Snyder. UNIFEM provided financial and technical assistance to innovative programmes and strategies that promoted women's human rights, political participation and economic security. Since 1976 it supported women's empowerment and gender equality through its programme offices and links with women's organizations in the major regions of the world. Its work on gender responsive budgets began in 1996 in Southern Africa and expanded to include East Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central America and the Andean region. It worked to increase awareness throughout the UN system of gender responsive budgets as a tool to strengthen economic governance in all countries. In 2011, UNIFEM merged into UN Women.
Charlotte Bunch is an American feminist author and organizer in women's rights and human rights movements. Bunch is currently the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is also a distinguished professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers.
Gender mainstreaming is the public policy concept of assessing the different implications for people of different genders of any planned policy action, including legislation and programmes, in all areas and levels. Mainstreaming essentially offers a pluralistic approach that values the diversity among people of different genders.
The Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) is an international non-governmental organization based in New York City, U.S. that advocates women's equality in global policy. Its early successes included achieving gender equality in the final documents of Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration. In 2006, the organization was named as an international Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme.
International Women's Year (IWY) was the name given to 1975 by the United Nations. Since that year March 8 has been celebrated as International Women's Day, and the United Nations Decade for Women, from 1976 to 1985, was also established.
The Center for Women's Global Leadership, based at Rutgers University, was founded in 1989 by Charlotte Bunch, the former executive director and an internationally renowned activist for women's human rights. Executive Director Krishanti Dharmaraj is also the founder of the Dignity Index and co-founder of WILD for Human Rights and the Sri Lanka Children's Fund. The former executive director, Radhika Balakrishnan, is now the faculty director, and a professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers, chair of the Board of the US Human Rights Network, and a board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Located on Douglass Residential College at Rutgers University, CWGL is a unit of International Programs within the School of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the Institute for Women's Leadership, a consortium of women's programs at Rutgers.
Discussions of LGBT rights at the United Nations have included resolutions and joint statements in the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), attention to the expert-led human rights mechanisms, as well as by the UN Agencies.
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, is a United Nations entity working for the empowerment of women.
The Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development was established in May 2010 as a joint initiative by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to promote Internet access, in particular, broadband networks in order to help achieve United Nations development goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals. The Commission was renamed the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, following the adoption of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015.
John Hendra recently established his own consulting practice after retiring from a dynamic 32 year United Nations career as a development leader in both Headquarters and the field. Hendra recently served as a member of the High-Level Group to review the governance of The Commonwealth and is currently serving on: the Advisory Council to Canada's Development Finance Institution ; on the board of Women Deliver Canada; and as an Associate Researcher with the German Development Institute (GDI).
The United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service is a programme of the United Nations mandated to promote and develop constructive relations between the United Nations and civil society organizations. UN-NGLS operates autonomously across the United Nations system and with civil society constituencies and social movements on cross-cutting and emerging issues on the UN agenda. For example, UN-NGLS currently focuses on the UN General Assembly preparatory process for negotiations of a global compact on migration, and high-level events organized by the President of the UN General Assembly. UN-NGLS advises civil society organizations on opportunities to engage with the UN and facilitates their participation in various UN processes and events. UN-NGLS has offices at UN headquarters in New York and is part of the United Nations Department of Global Communications.
The Post-2015 Development Agenda was a process from 2012 to 2015 led by the United Nations to define the future global development framework that would succeed the Millennium Development Goals. The new framework, starting from 2016 is called Sustainable Development Goals.
The Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F) was an international cooperation mechanism committed to eradicating poverty and inequality and to accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) worldwide. Its aim was to improve livelihoods and to influence public policy, which made it responsive to the needs of the poorest populations.
The United Nations Secretariat, in September 1999, promulgated Administrative Instruction (AI) on "Special Measures for the Achievement Of Gender Equality", to strengthen and expedite measures to achieve gender equality, especially in posts in the Professional category. Gender Equality A/I (ST/AI/1999/9), which superseded ST/AI/412 of 5 January 1996, came into effect on 1 October 1999. In 2012, Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, in his Annual Reports to the General Assembly, titled "Improvement of the status of women in the United Nations system" stated that Special Measures are "procedures designed to accelerate the achievement of gender parity at the Professional levels and above" and that the aim of these procedures was to ensure "gender balance in recruitment and promotion" and rectify "past and current forms and effects of discrimination against women" The Secretary General reiterated that Special measures for gender equality would remain in effect until the "goal of gender parity is achieved, and would be sustained for a period of time".
The World Conference on Women, 1985 or the Third World Conference on Women took place between 15 and 26 July 1985 in Nairobi, Kenya, as the end-decade assessment of progress and failure in implementing the goals established by the World Plan of Action from the 1975 inaugural conference on women as modified by the World Programme of Action of the second conference. Of significance during the conference was the end result of the Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women being adopted by consensus, unlike the previous two conferences. The conference marked the first time that lesbian rights were introduced in a UN official meeting and the turning-point for violence against women to emerge from being a hidden topic into one which needed to be addressed. Recognizing that the goals of the Decade for Women had not been met, the conference recommended and the General Assembly approved on-going evaluation of women's achievements and failures through the year 2000.
