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December 15, 2008

Dear Kemal, 

In November 2008, both UNIFEM (in its capacity as the Chair of the former UNDG Task Team on Gender Equality) and myself as UN Resident Coordinator co-hosted a Retreat on Delivering as One on Gender Equality on behalf of the UN DaO Pilots and UN System in Hanoi 19-21 November, 2008.  The Retreat was attended by participants from seven of the eight pilots, representatives from self-starter pilot countries in Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe, and representatives and gender experts from UN Agency Headquarters and Regional Offices.  
 

The participants shared experiences and identified lessons learned and strategies to strengthen gender mainstreaming and accountability for gender equality within the context of UN reform. 

 
To achieve the MDGs by 2015, it is important that the benefits of enhanced effectiveness as a result of UN reform reach women worldwide. This is all the more important as 90 countries start their UNDAF roll-out in 2009-2010. For this reason, the Retreat proposed specific recommended actions that the UNDG, the Regional Directors' Teams and Resident Coordinators should take to enable pilots to set new benchmarks for promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the One UN.  These include:
 

1)  Establishing a Working Group to build on existing systems and roll out a standard process for tracking revenues, allocations and expenditures for gender equality in the One UN pilots;

2)  Ensuring the mid-term assessment of the One UN pilots includes specific indicators and benchmarks for assessing UNCT performance on gender equality; and

3)   Designing the final evaluation of the One UN pilots to assess the impact of the UNCT’s support to national priorities for advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.


We have produced a short summary of the findings and recommendations from the Retreat, which we enclose with this e-mail. We hope that the results of the meeting will be reported to the UNDG Working Group on Programming and Policy Issues and each participant will share them with Resident Coordinator and Heads of Agency in their respective pilots (this message is also copied to all my colleague pilot RCs).The retreat was evaluated very positively and participants reported that the Retreat provided an invaluable opportunity to share experiences and good practices, to reflect on the challenges and lessons learned in delivering as one on gender, and also served to re-energise participants for the work ahead..
 

We were also in touch with Debbie Landey before the Retreat, and she expressed support for taking the recommendations of this convening forward. As such, we hope we can count as always on your leadership in tabling the above Action Agenda for discussion at the next UNDG meeting of Principals. We look forward to working with you and the wider UNDG membership to ensure that ‘Delivering as One’ will deliver on the UN promise of gender equality and women’s empowerment.
 

We very much welcome your continued support for the critical role the “pilots within a pilot” are playing in testing how UN reform can more effectively support countries to advance national gender equality goals.  

We very much welcome your continued support for the critical role the “pilots within a pilot” are playing in testing how UN reform can more effectively support countries to advance national gender equality goals.  
 
Very best from Hanoi
John Hendra
UN Resident Coordinator
 

* [[Media:Delivering_as_One_on_Gender_Equality_Final.doc|Delivering as One on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment]]

* [[Media:Delivering_as_One_on_Gender.pdf|DaO on Gender in Viet Nam]] 

* [[Media:Suggested_indicators_for_UNEG_process_evaluation_of_One_UN_pilots.doc|Suggested indicators for UNEG process evaluation of One UN pilots ]]

* [[Media:Un_retreat_participant_list_-_for_the_kit.doc|Participant list for DaO retreat]]