For years now, international civil institutions have been calling on the United Nations to establish an agency to tend to women's affairs, support their humanitarian causes, expand the scope of the programs addressing them, try to secure “UN” laws and legislations that would be binding to the member and non-member states to fight the oppression affecting the daughters of Eve, and find solutions to their sufferings due to cruelty and violence in some developed and developing states. There are countries in which women's dignity is debased, their rights publicly violated, and in which they are treated as third or fourth class citizens. In July 2010, these civil pressures and demands reaped the fruits they had been working to secure for many years, as the United Nations General Assembly officially announced the establishment of a new agency tending to women's affairs. This agency will be unofficially known as the “United Nations Agency for Women” and officially as the “United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.” It will start its work at the beginning of the new year (2011) and it is expected that its president will be appointed before the end of the current year. The civil and human rights institutions must be praised for their efforts and their patience, as well as for their perseverance for many years to deliver their humanitarian message about the suffering of women, to the point where the United Nations adopted these calls and demands and ratified the establishment of an independent agency. This agency's work would feature the support of women's causes, the achievement of parts of the UN development goals for the Millennium - namely the containment of persecution as well as the death, poverty and sickness rates by 2015 – and the handling of the causes of the victims of violence, rape and sexual harassment in many countries. According to official statistics, six out of ten women worldwide are the object of sexual and physical violence in their lives, while there are over one hundred countries around the world lacking specific legislations banning domestic violence and protecting women from the violence exerted against them. There is no doubt that the establishment of a UN agency for women is an important step and a great development. However, can such a decision be translated on the ground to provide better and safer lives for vulnerable women, and can it handle their problems especially in the presence of four UN-affiliated agencies which are tending to women's affairs but have so far failed to achieve the desired goal? Some are even wondering: Why create a new UN agency to empower women at the expense of men, as long as there are four UN agencies specialized in women's affairs: the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, the Division for the Advancement of Women and the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women? Will this agency manage to acquire a clear specialty which is already addressed by other UN agencies that are experts in terms of work on the field? How will it direct its activities toward achieving equality between genders? What will be the fate of the United Nations Population Fund specialized in mothers' health? Will we witness a duplication of the work or a competition that will not serve any of the sides, or will we witness a benign competition in favor of both women and men? The clear and announced goal behind the establishment of this agency is the expansion of the activities of UNIFEM, as well as the enhancement of its capabilities so that it is able to serve the largest number of women in numerous countries in which women's rights are being violated. It also aims at overcoming the shortage of resources and rights and the loss of power by women, in order to enhance gender equality. What is certain is that the launching of the agency's work will witness the overlapping of prerogatives and responsibilities, which will require the dodging of any clashes affecting the different specialties. This can be secured by providing a framework for its action and by preventing duplication between similar programs, even if they were to carry different names, in order to spare time, effort and money. What is even worse is the fact that the United Nations recognized in its last report that its programs' progress fluctuated and that many goals will not be achieved in the majority of the countries. It added in its Millennium Development Goals Report 2010, that around one and a half billion people around the world were living in extreme poverty, saying it was likely that the repercussions of the global financial crisis will proceed and that the poverty rates will be slightly higher in 2015 and the period which will follow it until 2020. This renders the UN's ability to carry out its programs the object of doubts, and its ability to overcome poverty, hunger and sickness in many countries the object of stalemate. Therefore, the progress of the United Nations' programs and agencies tending to women's affairs will remain “slow” on all fronts, in the absence of sufficient funding and a clear deadline for their implementation. In order for the establishment of an agency to empower women and protect their rights not to remain an official decision limited to words and never reaching the level of palpable actions, there is a need to enact clear UN laws and legislations that are binding to member and non-member states, in order to support vulnerable women, deter the oppression exercised against them and grant them their full and undivided rights. This would allow the improvement of their living, educational and occupational conditions, and would enable women to enjoy the same opportunities enjoyed by men.
