The Office of the Focal Point for Women at UN Women leads and coordinates the United Nations’ system-wide network of over 400 Gender Focal, agents of change who support the implementation of the Secretary-General’s System-wide Strategy on Gender Parity. The theme of the 2022 Annual Global Gender Focal Point Meeting was “Energize. Exchange. Enhance: Advancing gender parity across the UN system” and was held virtually on the 17–19 October.

Held in the context of the fifth anniversary of the Strategy, the Global Annual Meeting provided a unique opportunity for Gender Focal Points to exchange through peer-to-peer and inter-agency knowledge sharing and enhance their capacities to advance gender parity in their respective entities.

Capacity building sessions covered a range of topics including addressing sexual harassment and addressing racism, to advancing the implementation of the “Enabling environment guidelines for the UN system”, its supplementary guidance, and the “Field-specific enabling environment guidelines”, which were produced by UN Women in support of the Secretary-General’s strategy.

Throughout the meeting, Gender Focal Points engaged with senior UN leaders including members of the Chief Executives Board Task Force on Addressing Sexual Harassment. The United Nations Secretary-General Mr. António Guterres addressed participants via a video message, underlining the priority of reaching gender parity across the board and Mr. Earle Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet of the Executive Office of the Secretary-General reflected on the progress made in the past five years and how the remaining challenges can be overcome.