Nigeria‘s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Joy Ogwu confirmed the election which was done by consensus on Tuesday afternoon at the UN headquarters in New York, the same day Nigeria lost a spirited effort to win a seat on the UN Child Rights Committee.
To oversee the new UN Women, an Executive Board was composed with 41 members who were elected last month including Nigeria. The 41 board members include 10 from Africa, 10 from Asia, 4 from Eastern Europe, 6 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 5 from Western Europe and 6 from contributing countries.
The Bureau is a selection of 5 countries out of the 41 members of the Executive Board, whose duty is to plan the meetings and work of the Board. Members of the Bureau, according to UN diplomats agreed on Tuesday afternoon that Nigeria as Africa‘s representative on the Bureau should be the president.
Starting next month and for the rest of the year, Nigeria‘s Permanent Representative and Ambassador to the UN, Prof. Joy Ogwu will resume as the President of the Bureau and therefore president of the Executive Board raising Nigeria‘s profile at the UN, where the country is currently a member of the Security Council, and the chair of the Peacekeeping Committee, as a leading troop contributing UN member state.
The UN Women office which was created earlier this year will bring together at least four existing UN Secretariat offices and units under one new UN Secretariat department expected to be heavily funded and now known as UN Women under the Executive Directorship of the former female president of Chile, Ms. Michelle Bachelet.
The former UN offices and units that are now merging under the UN Women are the UN Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM, the Division for the Advancement of Women, DAW, the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, UN-INSTRAW.
From Africa, apart from Nigeria, other executive board members are Angola, Cape Verde, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Libya, and Tanzania.
Asia‘s representatives on the board are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Republic of Korea and Timor-Leste, while from eastern Europe there are Estonia, Hungary, Russian Federation and Ukraine.
From Latin America and the Caribbean are Argentina, Brazil, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada and Peru, while from Western Europe there are Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Sweden. Slots were also reserved for ” financially contributing countries including Mexico, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, United Kingdom and United States.
According to the UN releases, the 41-member Executive Board had decided ”that the Bureau of the Executive Board of UN Women shall be elected from among the representatives of its members, taking into consideration the need to ensure equitable geographical representation, and shall consist of a President and four Vice-Presidents, who shall hold office until their successors are elected.”
Source:http://www.punchng.com
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