Over the past few months intense negotiations on the gender entity have taken place at the UN Headquarters in New York.  A key issue has been defining the institutional nature of the new entity as a composite that combines normative and operational functions.  It has finally been agreed that the entity will neither be a Secretariat nor a Fund/Program but rather a technical and policy hybrid of the four current gender entities that really does combine aspects of both, led by an Under Secretary-General.

Technically the four existing units (DAW, OSAGI, UNIFEM, and INSTRAW) go out of existence as separate entities with the adoption of this resolution, but all of their  functions and activities continue into the transitional phase (July - Dec 31, 2010) and form the basis of the new entity.  These four units are the core of the transitional team that will be lead by the office of the Deputy Secretary General until the new USG is chosen.  It is anticipated that she will be in place in September, 2010.

Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, a founding member of the GEAR Campaign, stated, "We have high expectations for this new agency to be a solid foundation for advancing the human rights of women as central to global policy efforts to reduce poverty and move toward greater realization of peace and democracy in the world.   The coalition of women's groups and other social justice, human rights and development organizations that played a pivotal role in this effort will now turn its efforts toward ensuring that the new body has the human and financial resources necessary to succeed." 

You can find more in the press release of the GEAR Campaign Working goup  here.