SI at the United Nations


New York

As the United Nations headquarters and home to the General Assembly, all areas of the UN’s work is discussed in New York. The centre is also the headquarters of UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women created in 2010. The team of four SI UN Representatives in New York cover gender equality, sustainable development, financing for development, trafficking, migration, education, ageing, and peace and security. The SI Un Reps in New York are Bette Levy, Marie D’Amato-Rizzi, Barbara Rochman and Frances Zainoeddin.



The United Nations Office in Geneva is the second biggest UN Centre, after New York, and is a focal point for multilateral diplomacy, human rights, and peace and security. The UN’s Human Rights Council and its human rights review mechanisms, including Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), and the UN’s Refugee Agency are based in Geneva. For SI’s UN Representatives in Geneva, these human rights mechanisms provide a critical opportunity to provide recommendations to governments to ensure that actions are taken to promote gender equality and women’s and girls’ access to their human rights and fundamental freedoms. The UN Representatives in Geneva are Wilfrida Hendrickx, Sabine Kinzer and Sina Stiffler.



The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), United Nations Convention on Organised Crime (UNCOC) are all based in Vienna. SI UN Representatives focus on a range of issues critical to eliminating violence against women and girls, including human trafficking, ageing (elder abuse), harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), women in the workplace and women in the economy. As appropriate, SI’s UN Representatives are Dora Vrdlovec and Martina Gredler.



The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are based in Rome. This leads to a very focused programme of work, and as such SI’s UN Representative for this centre focuses on women’s roles in food production and distribution.
SI’s United Nations Representative for Rome is Liliana Mosca.



The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is based in Paris, meaning that the SI UN Representatives there primarily focus on education. However, because UNESCO and the NGO Committee there organise periodic fora on various issues, SI UN Representatives often adapt their workload in order to engage with the subjects of those fora such as water for all, and women and poverty. SI’s United Nations Representatives in Paris are Marie-Christine Gries and Rina Dupriet.



The United Nations Office in Nairobi focuses on environmental issues and covers the work of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). SI’s UN Representatives in Nairobi focus on issues such as rural women, disaster risk reduction, and the effects of climate change on women and girls.
SI’s UN Representatives in Nairobi are Alice Odingo and Rose Mwangi.

