UNITAR is now part of ITU’s movement “Equals”
July 2017, Geneva, Switzerland - With the aim to address the existing gender imbalance on permanent delegations to the United Nations multilateral conferences in Geneva and worldwide, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) launched the Women’s Leadership Programme (WLP) in May 2015. The Women’s Leadership Programme works hand in hand with UN-Women and across the UN-System to build the knowledge, skills and capacities of female government delegates. Through the organisation and delivery of tailored training and awareness-raising activities, the WLP seeks to achieve tangible change, and to promote gender equality and women’s full and effective participation in decision-making. The Programme offers the opportunity for UN Member States, UN agencies, international organizations, as well as private sector entities to work in partnership with UNITAR, and to achieve their respective goals and commitments.
Since its inception, and in the framework of its partnership with ITU, the WLP has successfully implemented two leadership workshops for the female delegates of the 2015 Radiocommunication Assembly (RA) and World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) in Geneva, and for delegates attending ITU’s 2016 session of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-16) in Yasmine Hammamet, Tunisia. The workshops were successful in providing a positive, empowering and engaging environment by building on over 15 years of growing synergy among female delegates to the WRC and RA, and complimenting ITU’s policies on gender equality. In fact, all the respondents agreed that the workshop was very useful, that their awareness of the topic has increased and that they would recommend this workshop to a colleague. The evaluation results show a significant increase in the number of participants who could discuss the importance and impact of greater gender balance in negotiating contexts and who could know how to better ensure gender balance in ITU processes after taking the negotiation workshop.
Read further in ITU's "Equals" blog post.