UN seeking girls or young women to speak at event (funded)

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UN Women (the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women) is seeking girls or young women with disabilities, below the age of 20, including autistic girls and young women, to be speakers for International Women's Day events in New York City on 6 March 2020. They can be from any region of the world, but preferably the Global South. The younger the better. Must speak English, as language translation will not be available. UN Women will fund travel for the speaker (and a personal assistant if needed). Please contact Priyanka Narahari at UN Women to submit the name and details of suitable candidates: [email protected]

Feel free to share this information.

Males Need Not Apply!

Does a transgender girl with a disability count?

Is this the UN organ that Saudi Arabia is the current head of, or am I mixing that up with some other UN organ?

So ... a UN organization that Saudi Arabia is the current head of is seeking or young women below the age of 20, ostensibly for a speaking engagement ... hmm ...

Naah ... can't be anything suspicious about that, right?

My guess is that they would accept applications from trans women. You should contact them directly to be sure.



You are mixing something up. No one country is ever the "head" of any UN agency. The current Executive Director of UN Women is from South Africa. Saudi Arabia was elected a member of the Executive Board of UN Women, one of about forty countries on the Executive Board. Members of the Executive Board are elected by a vote of all other countries. The current President of the Executive Board is from Finland.



No and no.

So now you're saying that the UN organization is NOT seeking young women, thus contradicting your original statement.

Very peculiar ... maybe you could provide a working link to the actual UN article, instead of just an email address that could be easily proxied ...?

Are you a troll or something? No: UN Women is not headed by Saudi Arabia. No: UN Women is not luring young women, as you imply. No: there's nothing suspicious about it. And no: the e-mail address of the UN Women staff member can't be proxied. It's literally at the same URL as their website. Why don't you go and inform yourself instead of trolling this thread:

https://www.unwomen.org/en

The information was circulated to people in the disability movement by e-mail, sent by a staff member of the International Disability Alliance, via an IDA mailing list. I chose to make it public so autistic girls and women have an equal opportunity to apply. No: there's no article to link to.

Last edited by Aspendos on 30 Jan 2020, 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My bad, I was thinking about the UN Human Rights Council.

No. I'm a concerned member of this website, one who is especially concerned with its members -- especially the women -- being exploited by outsiders.Why did you not fully inform us in your original post? The link you provided just before this one was somewhat helpful, but still does not provide full transparency.There, that wasn't so hard, was it? Next time, please be more forthcoming from the start.

The system there is similar. The members of the Human Rights Council are elected by a vote of all UN member states. Saudi Arabia is not currently a member of the HRC. (Note: an individual from Saudi Arabia is one of the 18 members of the HRC's Advisory Committee, which however has no decision-making powers, as it is only mandated to provide the HRC with thematic studies and research-based advice.)



I think your various posts in this thread speak for themselves. I elaborated to protect members of this forum from your "alternative facts", fake news, and conspiracy theories.

Whatever.

I am not one to believe someone just because they expect to be believed. So if your recruitment program is legit, I expect to see something about it in the public media. If it does not appear in the public media, then I will still be skeptical. It's that simple.

It stuck in my mind because I read an article a few years back about how they were having a panel about human rights and, due to a system of rotating member states assuming the role of leader, they had to have it with Saudi Arabia at the helm and do their best to keep a straight face. Don't know if that system is still in effect, but it kind of tarnished the image of the UN in my mind.

What are you even talking about? What recruitment programme? This is a one-off opportunity to speak at an event organized by UN Women for International Women's Day. Nothing more and nothing less.



Membership on most UN bodies is still rotating among countries. It's a bit more complex than that, though. Most countries have priorities what councils, committees, or boards they want to sit on, depending on their domestic or international political focus areas. So that may leave openings for less desirable countries to be elected to bodies they may appear unsuited for because there are not enough other countries running in these elections. If, for example, four seats on a board are reserved for the Asia-Pacific group of countries (which includes Saudi Arabia) and the Asia-Pacific group only has four candidate countries, these countries will generally be elected by the other countries. One reason for that is also that each country that opposes such an election would otherwise have to be afraid that they will be penalized the next time and their candidacies torpedoed by countries with differing views and policies.

The case you refer to was apparently when the ambassador of Saudi Arabia was chosen to head the Consultative Group of five ambassadors from countries on the Human Rights Council that pre-screen applications for human rights mandate holders appointed by the HRC (Independent Experts, Special Rapporteurs, Working Group members, Expert Mechanism members, such as the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities). In practice, the Consultative Group has limited power. They choose from among all applicants for an unpaid position and conduct remote interviews with the most suitable candidates. The ambassador from Saudi Arabia was only one of five members on the Consultative Group, which again, includes representatives of all regional groups. The Consultative Group then presents an extensive report and ranked list of the two or three applicants they consider the most suitable for a mandate to the President of the HRC. The President of the HRC has more power than the Consultative Group, as (s)he conducts discussions with all HRC member countries to find a consensus among them with regard to the appointment of mandate holders. After such consultations, the HRC President (not the Consultative Group) presents one of the ranked candidates (not necessarily in the order suggested by the Consultative Group) for election to all HRC members. The full HRC then elects the mandate holder. Saudi Arabia had a very small role in this and at no point were they able to make the final decision. At most they may have been able to prevent some applicants from in-depth consideration. This likely didn't make all that much of a difference.

A lot of the reporting on the UN is done by journalists who never bother to understand the complexity of these processes.

Last edited by Aspendos on 31 Jan 2020, 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A lot of UN processes are misreported because the sources never bother to fully explain their complexity from the start.

It would be nice if those processes weren't kept hidden from outsiders under the assumption that if outsiders have to ask what's going on, either they aren't smart enough to understand or they are just being hostile.

A lot more transparency from the UN would go a long way toward alleviating any such misunderstandings.

Actually, much of this information is in fact public. There's for example a weekly newsletter sent out by the civil society unit of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which includes links to a lot of such information. You just have to subscribe to it. Pretty much all UN agencies, bodies, mandate holders, and so on have websites and social media profiles. You just have to go look for them. The OHCHR is also quite good at putting out press releases and publishing summaries of meetings of human rights bodies that, unfortunately, rarely get reported on by the media. If you're interested, here's for example a link to the latest report by the Consultative Group of the HRC (from the newsletter):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NC6c56olVqA_OSL5SalMOAIuxI9Uwwfa/view