Review of management and administration in the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) – JIU/REP/2024/1

The Joint Inspection Unit is pleased to announce the release of its report on management and administration in the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), prepared by Inspectors Toshiya Hoshino and Mohanad Al-Musawi.

UN-Women started its activities in 2011, with unique characteristics in terms of its genesis, mandate composition and governance structure within the United Nations system. Over the past decade, UN-Women has undergone significant growth in terms of its financial resources and expenditure, as well as the size of its workforce, thereby “graduating” to a medium sized organization. That evolution has been accompanied by several organizational restructuring reforms and a large-scale business transformation initiatives as UN-Women further engaged in the repositioning of the United Nations development system. In its second decade of existence, UN-Women has aspired to transform into UN-Women 2.0. In that regard, UN-Women is looking to implement one of its most important internal reforms since its establishment, namely the pivot to the field initiative, to bring the Entity closer to the women and girls whom it serves.

While the Inspectors have reviewed the evolution of the organization mainly over the past five years, some issues, originating pre-2010 within the earlier four gender-related entities, were also covered.

The report contains nine (9) formal recommendations: five (5) are directed to the Executive-Director and four (4) are addressed to the Executive Board. Formal recommendations tackle areas such as governance, executive management, accountability and internal control, financial resources, knowledge management and human resources management. These formal recommendations are complemented by a series of informal recommendations which are additional suggestions for improvements that have not been made formal to avoid overburdening the organization, although their implementation could also contribute to further improving the overall management framework of the Entity and strengthening its internal processes.

The JIU also issued a Supplementary Paper containing additional observations pertaining to each of the areas mandated to the Entity by the General Assembly founding resolution 64/289, namely UN-Women tripartite mandate of normative, operational and coordination.

Access the full report here

Access the review highlights here

Access the supplementary paper here