United Nations In Indonesia
Country Results Report 2021
How We Walk the Talk on Leaving No One Behind
To ensure the UN in Indonesia embodies the spirit of Leave No One Behind as well as advocates for it, the UNCT has introduced a variety of measures including a pledge for its personnel not to arrange for or participate in all-male panels, or “manels”, and standardized scorecards that promote adherence to UN Reform and assess the UNCT’s performance on gender equality, disability, and youth inclusion.
The No Manel Pledge
The all-male panel, or “manel,” has long been a fixture of conferences, talk shows, and policy forums. But the boom in digital communications during the COVID-19 pandemic made the lack of diversity on panel discussions even more apparent: all too often webinars featured a mosaic of all-male faces.
In line with SDG 5, Gender Equality, the UN in Indonesia launched a “no-manels” pledge in May 2021, vowing not to participate in all-male panels and producing guidelines to help partners organize panels with a more equal gender balance. “Manels are like tunnel vision: they limit the understanding of a topic for they only bring men’s perspectives to the discussion,” says Resident Coordinator Valerie Julliand. “There is no topic on earth that doesn’t concern women, whether it’s education or health or conflict or sanitation of infrastructure.”
All-male panels may draw incorrect or at least incomplete conclusions, the Resident Coordinator added, and they reinforce sexist and exclusionary stereotypes of men commanding authority or superior expertise because “they imply women are not capable of contributing to the discussion.”
Ambassadors representing more than 40 countries joined the UN in Indonesia’s “no manels” pledge in May, as well as senior officials from the private sector, civil society, and the Government.
Scorecards to Measure Our Progress on Leaving No One Behind
Since 2020, the UN in Indonesia has measured its performance against three scorecards on gender, disability, and youth. The scorecard cover programmatic operations, communications, monitoring and evaluation, and partnerships. Two years of self-assessment against UN scorecards has highlighted the importance of jointly addressing indicators across UN agencies—accordingly, in 2021, each scorecard was accompanied by an action plan with clear timelines and assignments on improvements to be enacted in 2022.
