No Pacific Representation on Board of UN Women

Forty-one representatives and not one from the Pacific, even from Australia or New Zealand... This is a shameful situation, according to Rae Julian, National President of the UNIFEM National Committee for New Zealand (part of UN Women).

The United Nations has recently elected a governing board for its newest entity, UN Women, which unites the four previous agencies working for women and including UNIFEM. UNIFEM NZ was concerned when the assignment of seats was announced and the Pacific was not included among the groups. We were told on follow-up that the Pacific Island states were included within ‘Asia’, which was allocated ten seats. New Zealand and Australia are part of ‘Western Europe and other’ with allocated five seats.”

“The Pacific Island women have been lobbying hard to persuade their governments to nominate suitable women for at least one of the “Asian” seats. We heard informally that Asia’s list had been agreed among themselves with no Pacific input. Now it appears that in order to block Iran’s bid for a seat, Western governments including the US, Canada and Australia persuaded East Timor to put forward a bid. Another opportunity for the Pacific, which was ignored...”

“Once again the largest geographic region in the world is passed over. As it was included within the highly populous and powerful countries of Asia, that is not surprising. Most UN agencies have as a division, East Asia and the Pacific. It is disappointing that those setting up UN Women haven’t adopted the same divisions. If they had, it would have been much harder to ignore the claims of the Pacific Island states. Surely one or two seats among forty-one is not too much to expect,” concluded Rae Julian.

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