Accelerate, activate, advance: Advancing gender parity across the UN system

The Office of the Focal Point for Women in the UN System at UN Women leads and coordinates the network of nearly 500 UN Gender Focal Points, key agents of change who support the implementation of the Secretary-General’s System-wide Strategy on Gender Parity.

This publication provides an summary of the 2023 Annual Global Gender Focal Point Meeting, held virtually on 9–11 October 2023. The theme of the meeting was “Accelerate, activate, advance: Advancing gender parity across the UN system”.

The global annual meeting provides a unique opportunity for Gender Focal Points from across the UN system to accelerate through reflection, to activate through peer-to-peer and inter-agency knowledge sharing, and eventually to advance gender parity in their respective entities.

Capacity-building sessions covered a range of topics, including:

• the Secretary-General’s Report on the Improvement in the Status of Women,
• the implementation of the Enabling Environment Guidelines and the Field-specific Enabling Environment Guidelines,
• the UN System-wide Dashboard on Gender Parity,
• the UN System-wide Knowledge Hub on addressing sexual harassment,
• upstander/bystander intervention training, and
• addressing anti-racism.

Furthermore, the Gender Focal Points engaged with senior UN leadership, including members of the Chief Executives Board (CEB) Task Force on Addressing Sexual Harassment within the Organizations of the UN System.

Gender Focal Points continue to play a key role to support their leadership and entities to advance gender parity.