12 May 2011
Next week Michelle Bachelet will make her first visit to the UK since she was appointed Head of UN Women. We’re calling for questions you would like her to answer. You can submit questions to website-team@dfid.gov.uk or via our DFID Twitter channel or Facebook page. We will then select three questions to include in an interview with her which we will film and share online early next week.
Bachelet’s visit is an opportunity to meet with the Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell, the Home Secretary Theresa May, International Development Minister Alan Duncan and other ministers and officials to discuss how the UK and UN Women can work closely together to improve the lives of girls and women worldwide.
Michelle Bachelet was appointed Executive Director of UN Women by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon in September 2010. She is a qualified doctor, and served as Health Minister and Defence Minister before becoming the first woman elected as President of Chile, serving from 2006-2010.
UN Women was formally launched in February this year. It merges four previously existing UN institutions that worked on gender into one stronger organisation designed to champion girls and women, and work towards gender equality and the empowerment of women worldwide. It will improve effectiveness and efficiency in the UN system by removing duplication and improving delivery on the ground.
UN Women will have a threefold role. It plans to have offices in 76 countries around the world that will provide expertise and financial support to a whole range of programmes that work to achieve gender equality, for example economic empowerment, women’s leadership and women’s role in peace resolution. It will also help negotiate and implement globally agreed norms and standards for gender equality. Finally it will coordinate and hold the overall efforts of the UN system on gender to account, in areas from women’s political participation to sexual and reproductive health.
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