The World Cup was the success we know, but the question of the legacy for South Africa and for the entire continent remains.

Now that the World’s attention is no longer turned towards South Africa, Patricia Rey is back to her every-day duties, which she describes as demanding but also passionating. Patricia’s work requires a lot of coordination and often travelling as she is liaising between 14 countries of Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands region. One of her main responsibilities is to coordinate political advocacy, strategic planning and roll out of the Africa UNiTE Campaign to end violence against women and girls in Southern Africa, led by UNIFEM on behalf of the entire UN System.

Africa UNiTE is the regional component for Africa of the UN SG’s UNiTE Campaign, which is being supported by UNIFEM’s SAY NO – UNITE Campaign, a platform that records what individuals, organizations and governments worldwide are doing to end violence against women. The goal is to reach 1 million actions by November 2010. When I advocate for this extraordinary project, I always like to emphasize that this Campaign is for Africa and by Africa. The Campaign shares with the MDGs the deadline of 2015 for the achievement of its 6 outcomes. In this context, as Patricia points out, it is crucial highlighting that violence against women and girls prevents development and clearly hampers achievement of the different MDGs! At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime…”

To face this challenge, Patricia’s office is growing rapidly with a number of colleagues coming on board between this and the next year. But UNIFEM as an organization is facing a major and welcomed challenge with the recent creation of UN Women, the new Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, to be fully operative from 1 January 2011. This new entity for Gender will report directly to Secretary-General of the United Nations and will bring together the mandates and functions of UNIFEM and 3 other UN gender Agencies (OSAGI, DAW and INSTRAW). Regarding the JPOs working for UNIFEM, it is important to note that all agreements made with UNIFEM, whether in the context of partnerships, programmes or funding arrangements, will then be transferred to and fully honoured by UN Women.

For Patricia and her colleagues in South Africa, hope is that this World Cup will serve as a catalyst for further development and gender equality in the country, the region and the continent.

 

(Visit the website of SAY NO – UNITE: www.saynotoviolence.org and the UN SG UNiTE  endviolence.un.org ).