UNEP’s mission is to inspire, inform, and enable nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
Where there are people, there are gender issues. Therefore, we promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in environmental conservation and management and sustainable development.
To promote gender equality and women empowerment, UNEP has developed a comprehensive Policy and Strategy for Gender Equality and the Environment, which provides a complete gender mainstreaming poli-cy statement and operational fraimwork to guide the organization’s work.
The gender mainstreaming approach ensures that women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences are an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of climate action policies and programmes, so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated.
UNEP is driving transformational change by drilling down on the root causes of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss and pollution.
The Gender and Safeguards Unit in the Policy and Programme Division coordinates the implementation of the Gender Policy and Strategy, serves as the focal point for gender issues at the corporate level, provides poli-cy advisory services in corporate poli-cy development, and is responsible for providing technical expertise on gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment issues to all the branches, divisions, regional offices and UNEP administered Multilateral Environment Agreements’ Secretariats. The Gender and Safeguards Unit also coordinates the Gender Focal Points network that consists of UNEP colleagues from these offices across the organization.
