It is with great pleasure that we welcome Lisa Sutton, Director of the Independent Evaluation and Audit Services (IEAS). IEAS was created in 2018 to perform internal oversight through the Independent Evaluation Service (IES) and Internal Audit Service (IAS). Under Lisa’s leadership, this co-location of IES and IAS will help ensure UN Women delivers on its integrated mandate to achieve gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment.
With 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators (of which 54 are gender-specific), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a historic global compact to achieve gender equality by 2030.
More than 75 per cent of the world’s population lives in societies that are more unequal today than 20 years ago. In many parts of the world, income gaps have deepened despite impressive growth performances. The sharpest increases in income inequality have taken place in those developing countries that were especially successful in pursuing vigorous growth and managed, as a result, to graduate into higher income brackets.1 Economic progress may well exacerbate inequalities, not alleviate them.
The cover of this 2017-2018 Annual Report of the Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) captures the diversity, breadth and importance of the projects and civil society organizations that the FGE supports.
UN Women’s Strategy: The Empowerment of Women and Girls with Disabilities –
Towards Full and Effective Participation and Gender Equality was developed to ensure a more systematic approach to strengthen the inclusion of the rights of women and girls with disabilities in UN Women’s efforts to achieve gender equality, empowerment of all women and girls, and the realization of their rights.