We believe that the UN reform process is an opportunity for a stronger role for the UN on development issues and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Gender equality and the empowerment of women are seen as critical to the achievement of these goals and UNIFEM's role here is vital.

We are concerned that the centrality of gender issues and women's rights to the development agenda is not being fully acknowledged in the UN reform deliberations.

Although UNIFEM is the smallest fund at the United Nations, its work has changed the lives of millions of women worldwide. In 2004, the consultative committee of UNIFEM undertook an independent organizational assessment which concluded that UNIFEM was under-resourced, and although it "punched well above its weight", UNIFEM needed to expand to fulfill its mandate.

At this historic time, rather than disbanding or merging UNIFEM, as is being discussed, the Governments of the UN should be looking at ways to increase its authority, status and resources.

In addressing the UN reform process, the Group of 77, the Caucus of Developing Country Governments at the UN, stated that the mandate of UNIFEM should be strengthened so that it can be even more active in its role of catalyzing and mainstreaming gender concerns in the UN system.

UNIFEM is the women'S fund at the UN, advocating for the empowerment of women and gender equality. What message would it send to the world if the women's agency was subsumed into another part of the UN?

There is a huge job to do to achieve equality for women, when so many do not want, either consciously or subconsciously, to change the status of women, and wish to keep women as second class citizens.

Survey after survey has revealed the evaporation of gender equality commitments in gender mainstreaming which, although an essential strategy, shows its weakness, and demonstrates the need for a driver, such as UNIFEM, to keep the issue of gender and to affect real change towards equality.

The outcome document from the 2005 World Summit is firm in its recognition of gender equality and women's empowerment as key to all development goals. A strong women's agency, an enhanced UNIFEM, is therefore essential to the future success of the UN.

We must remember the words of Eleanor Roosevelt that seem so appropriate today:

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression."