Recently on United Nations Public Service Day, a ceremony was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania by the United Nations in which annual Public Service Awards were awarded to winning entries from various countries for their innovative initiatives. Awardees received a trophy and a certificate of recognition. This year’s event is highly symbolic and unique as it is the first time in the history of the United Nations Public Service Award that awards were given for gender-responsive service delivery, as well as the first time that an African nation hosted the event.
The award winners presented their experiences and led discussions on how their services can be replicated and tailored to the specific circumstances of other countries. Gender-responsive service delivery awards were given to public service innovations and initiatives that improved services in any of the following ways:
– Increased quality and affordability of services for women users;
– Responded to particular constraints that women face in accessing services, such as security risks, childcare burdens, limited mobility and financial access issues;
– Implemented mechanisms to support women to easily obtain information about government services;
– ensured that public servants are sanctioned when women’s needs are ignored or when women’s rights for service delivery are not protected;
– Increased the ability of women to observe, monitor and analyse government decision-making and processes, including participatory budgeting and planning processes;
– Introduced a distinctively new approach to promoting the participation of citizens, especially poor women, in policymaking.
Award recipients for this category were selected by the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration. The first-place winners were from India and Egypt, while the second place winners were from Korea (two) and Oman.
The innovation in India was from the Swanchetan Society for Mental Health that has developed a 24-hour psychological centre providing trauma counselling to women who were victims of a heinous crime such as public humiliation, lynching and caste-based rape.
The Egyptian winner was the “Women Health Outreach Programme” (WHOP), a government-funded programme that offers free breast screening and therapeutic procedures for all Egyptian women over the age of 45 within their local communities.
The first Korean winner was a programme to self-empower young women at risk of prostitution in the Seoul metropolitan area. The core of the programme was to create an empowerment system using education and employment. The programme worked with a late-night street counselling service to identify young women sex workers who might benefit from targeted early intervention programmes.
The other Korean winner was The Gyeonggi Women’s Development Centre (GWDC) dedicated to expanding women’s career capabilities and economic empowerment. It is an online resource centre for women whose employment had been interrupted due to reasons such as familial or childcare responsibilities.
The United Nations Public Service Awards is the most prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service. It rewards the creative achievements and contributions of public service institutions that lead to a more effective and responsive public administration in countries worldwide. Through an annual competition, the UN Public Service Awards promotes the role, professionalism and visibility of public service.
Sourced from http://www.unwomen.org
