| United Nations creates a new women's rights agency |
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UNITED NATIONS — Michelle Bachelet, famous for breaking gender barriers by becoming the first woman elected president of Chile, will head the new global United Nations agency created to advance women’s rights, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced Tuesday. Mr. Ban said he chose Ms. Bachelet, 58, from 26 candidates for her political skills and ability to create consensus. She had been a front-runner from the start. “We have to make sure that women’s issues are an essential element on the agendas of all heads of state, all governments,” Ms. Bachelet said in an interview. The United Nations has been overshadowed on numerous issues by other global organizations in recent years, but Ms. Bachelet said the very fact that it was creating an agency to concentrate on women indicated the priority being given to “putting women’s issues in a higher position.” New reports had suggested that Ms. Bachelet wanted to stay active in Chilean politics after finishing her term in March, but she said she had never commented publicly on the job. Still, she acknowledged, it was a tough choice to move away from Chile and her three children — her youngest daughter is just finishing high school while the other two are grown. “I will always care about what happens in Chile, so it was not an easy decision,” she said, noting that she ultimately decided she wanted the challenge. Ms. Bachelet comes with a “wealth of experience, global leadership, and global stature,” Mr. Ban said, and will bring to the post “a real force to meet the expectations of many women and girls and children around the world.” It took four years of wrangling among member states to create the agency, which consolidates four smaller agencies whose work on women’s issues often overlapped. It has been given the rather unwieldy title of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, but in diplomatic shorthand it is often called the “Gender Entity.” Source: The New York Times |
