UNIFEM - United Nations Development Fund for Women

UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programmes and strategies that promote women's human rights, political participation and economic security. Within the UN system, UNIFEM promotes gender equality and links women's issues and concerns to national, regional and global agendas by fostering collaboration and providing technical expertise on gender mainstreaming and women's empowerment strategies. UNIFEM's mandate is to:

• Support innovative and experimental activities benefiting women in line with national and regional priorities.
• Serve as a catalyst, with the goal of ensuring the appropriate involvement of women in mainstream development activities, as often as possible at the pre-investment stage.
• Play an innovative and catalytic role in relation to the United Nations system of development cooperation.

UNIFEM was created in 1976, in response to a call from women's organizations attending the 1975 UN First World Conference on Women in Mexico City. Today, UNIFEM works in over 100 countries and has 14 Regional Programme Directors and a growing network of affiliated gender advisors and specialists in Africa, the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Core strategies guiding UNIFEM's work:

1. Strengthening the capacity and leadership of women's organizations and networks.

2. Leveraging political and financial support for women from a wide range of stakeholders.

3. Forging new partnerships among women's organizations, governments, the UN system and the private sector.

4. Undertaking pilot projects to test innovative approaches to women's empowerment and gender mainstreaming.

5. Building a knowledge base on effective strategies for engendering mainstream development.

UNIFEM is represented worldwide by staff at headquarters in New York, 13 field offices, 5 sub-regional gender advisors and 2 gender and HIV/AIDS advisors. Together, they are working to shape and advance UNIFEM's programmes and priorities in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

A dedicated group of volunteers and friends also provide valuable support to UNIFEM's work, including the National Committees for UNIFEM, the NGO Committee on UNIFEM and other individuals.

UNIFEM Headquarters in New York

United Nations Development Fund for Women
304 E45th Street
15th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Tel: +1 (212) 906-6400
Fax: +1 (212) 906-6705

http://www.unifem.org/

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