Introduction of the organizer

UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programmes and strategies to foster women's empowerment and gender equality. UNIFEM focuses its activities on the over-arching goal of supporting the implementation of existing commitments at the national level to advance gender equality. In support of this goal, UNIFEM works in the following thematic areas:

• Strengthening women's economic security and rights;
• Ending violence against women;
• Reversing the spread of HIV and AIDS among women and girls;
• Achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war.

UNIFEM was created by a UN General Assembly Resolution in 1976, following a call from women's organizations attending the 1975 UN First World Conference on Women in Mexico City.

UNIFEM's mandate is to:

• Support innovative and experimental activities benefiting women in line with national and regional priorities;
• Serve as a catalyst, with the goal of ensuring the appropriate involvement of women in mainstream development activities, as often as possible at the pre-investment stage;
• Play an innovative and catalytic role in relation to the United Nations'overall system of development cooperation. (GA Resolution 39/125)
  UNIFEM Japan Liaison Office was established in October, 2009 in Sakai City (Osaka) and began outreach activities in Japan.

URL
www.unifem.org
www.saynotoviolence.org