The United Nations General Assembly voted Monday to create a new, more powerful agency for women, in a move supporters hailed as a breakthrough for women’s equality and rights. An Assembly resolution called for the amalgamation of four existing United Nations offices dealing with women’s affairs into a single body to be headed by an under secretary general. The unanimous vote followed three years of negotiations.
The creation of this body had actually been somewhat controversial, as some member states opposed consolidating the currently existing women’s agencies into one supra-agency. The step is to be applauded, though, as it will make the UN’s work on women’s issues more streamlined and more effective.
UNIFEM, one of the UN’s chief agencies dedicated to women, naturally approves.