SUMMER SCHOLARS BLOG: Talisa Anderson
UNFPA’s Executive Director, Natalia Kanem, speaking at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris during the opening ceremony on June 30, 2021.
I am grateful to have been awarded the Summer Scholars Fellowship with the United Nations Association of New York (UNA-NYC), which has given me the opportunity to work with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) this summer. While I was originally assigned to UNFPA’s Pacific Subregional Office in Suva, Fiji for the summer of 2020, the pandemic led to a postponement of my fellowship and a change of course that fortuitously enabled me to support the Gender and Human Rights Branch (GHRB) within the Technical Division based in UNFPA’s headquarters in New York.
UNFPA’s dedication to preventing gender-based violence, promoting girls’ and women’s empowerment, and providing greater access to sexual and reproductive health services directly aligns with my professional interest and personal passion for leveling the playing field for marginalized individuals. As an advocate for advancing gender equality within a human rights framework, working remotely for this specific branch within the organization over the past three months has been particularly rewarding for me.
The projects that I undertook within the GHRB allowed me to understand more fully the magnitude of UNFPA’s impact on the lives of women, children, and adolescents worldwide in its delivery of services and distribution of supplies. Last year, in the midst of COVID-19, UNFPA procured more than 240 million cycles of oral contraceptive pills, and supported 1,030 mobile clinics and over 800 women’s and girls’ safe spaces located in 42 countries. The organization is working to scale up these efforts through the strategic partnerships it has cultivated in its country and regional offices.
The core of UNFPA’s mission focuses on attaining the following sustainable development goals: SDG 3, good health and well-being, SDG 4, quality education, and SDG 5, gender equality. The realization of these goals is entrenched in the indicators for each of the programs that the GHRB implements. It was most evident for me how crucial the SDGs are to the mandate and values of the UN agency while collaborating with the GHRB to assist with UNFPA’s involvement in the Paris Generation Equality Forum that took place between June 30 and July 2.
The Forum served as a global multi-stakeholder gathering to accelerate action and accountability in achieving gender equality. The GHRB developed advocacy, financial, policy, and programmatic commitments for the Forum, which embodied each of the three above-mentioned SDGs along with SDG 16, peace, justice and strong institutions and SDG 17, partnerships for the goals. UNFPA’s twelve commitments were co-created with sister UN agencies and civil society organizations for the purpose of working with governments to increase women’s and girls’ bodily autonomy, expand access to sexual and reproductive health services, and realize SDG target 5.3, “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.”
One of the twelve commitments UNFPA made during the Generation Equality Forum in Paris.
As part of its commitments to the Forum, over the next five years, UNFPA aims to increase the quality and access to voluntary contraception services for 25 million additional adolescent girls and women, and improve reproductive rights literacy for 66 million women and adolescent girls. It also intends to reach an additional 25 million women and girls through the UNFPA and UNICEF joint program on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation.
Achieving these targets requires true transformative change. This type of change necessitates a cross-sectoral approach to dismantling the systemic challenges that have inhibited vulnerable populations from exercising their rights. Throughout the process of the Forum, from the preparatory phase to the live events and the considerations for the road ahead, my colleagues underscored the need for collective action throughout UNFPA, within the broader UN system, and among all key actors in the development and humanitarian nexus.
There was also a resounding message of the importance in addressing discriminatory socio-cultural norms and bolstering existing legal frameworks that protect women and girls. Most importantly, my colleagues emphasized the need to center women and girls in actuating the much-needed sustainable, social change defined in UNFPA’s Forum commitments. This will involve creating spaces for local women’s human rights defenders to participate meaningfully in decisions that affect their lives.
It has been truly enriching working towards redesigning our current structures to shape a world that is more inclusive of the rights of women and girls. The expansive mindset of my GHRB colleagues allowed for a healthy synergy of ideas in spite of working virtually. What I appreciated most about my experience with the branch is the mindfulness with which my colleagues continually assessed and revised the indicators for the Forum commitments and the accountability mechanisms for ensuring successful implementation of the targets. I believe these dynamic discussions both contribute to and support the branch’s culture of adaptive learning. I have UNA-NYC to thank for making it possible for me to partake in this holistic, unified pathway forward for global gender equality.
Our Summer Scholars Blog showcases our fellows’ experiences with the UN agencies and non-governmental organizations they worked with this summer. Learn more about our Summer Scholars Fellowship program and this year’s other fellows here.