Gender equality and women’s empowerment are recognized as cross-cutting priorities across all aspects of the UN Environment Programme's (UNEP) work. UNEP promotes men and women’s participation in all environmental protection and sustainable development activities.
Key UN conventions and agreements which provide the global mandate for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment include:
- The United Nations Charter (1945)
- The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW 1979)
- United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development and Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992)
- United Nations Conference on Women: equality, development, peace and Platform for Action (Beijing 1995)
- Millenium Development Goals (MDGs)
- The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- The Future We Want (Rio+20 2012) For people and planet: the United Nations Environment Programme strategy for 2022–2025 to tackle climate change, loss of nature and pollution (Medium Term Strategy)
Gender is a key component central to the vision of UNEP for the 2030 Agenda and its contribution to the decade of action
The Medium Term Strategy (MTS) outlines that UNEP will strengthen institutional capacity for gender-responsive programme delivery. In the period 2022-2025, UNEP will leverage the opportunities provided by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to strengthen the institutional capacity of policymakers, UNEP staff and key partners to develop and implement gender-responsive policies and strategies. UNEP will enable access to information by stakeholders and government partners, development and implementation of gender-responsive environmental policies and strategies and strengthened strategic partnerships with key partners in order to secure commitments and elicit collective gender-transformative actions to achieve the SDGs.
