WASHINGTON, D.C. – This month, the United Nations (UN) will celebrate its 80th anniversary, and yet the UN has failed to protect women. Independent Women’s Center for American Safety and Security released a new policy focus on The Failure of Multilateral Institutions to Protect Women. The report focuses on the institutional failures within the UN that have undermined its founding mission to protect women and girls around the world.

In the policy focus, Meaghan Mobbs, director of Independent Women’s Center for American Safety and Security, analyzes the various failures of UN entities—from delayed and muted responses to sexual atrocities, the sexual exploitation committed by UN peacekeepers, the appointment of authoritarian regimes to leadership roles, and inconsistent advocacy on gender-based violence that fails to recognize sex-based protections.

Using the October 7th attacks and the abandoning of Israeli women as a case study on the systemic failures within the UN, Mobbs highlights that political agendas and bureaucratic stumbling blocks have driven the UN to weakness and inaction. 

To address these failures, Mobbs proposes a series of reforms, including:

  • Increasing accountability to address sexual violence committed by UN personnel;
  • Reevaluating leadership in UN human rights bodies to ensure that countries with poor women’s rights records are not given positions of influence, and;
  • Enhancing internal oversight mechanisms and coordination between agencies, as well as increased operational transparency.

Until these reforms can be implemented, Mobbs recommends defunding the UN until it once again deserves the global support it receives. She said:

The United Nations has failed in its most basic duty to protect women. Its peacekeepers have committed abuse. Its leaders have refused to define who a woman is. It has elevated regimes that oppress women. This is not a system we should support. Until there is real accountability and reform, the UN should not receive another dollar. It is time for the United States to lead by example and begin the process of defunding the UN.

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