On September 8, 2021, as part of the Annual Retreat for United Nations Country Team in Ghana, leaders (heads of Agencies, Programme leaders and Operations Heads) took a ‘No Manel’ pledge to say NO to all forms of male-only panels constituted by the United Nations.

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Today we are officially starting the #NOManel campaign in response to the continued routine absence of women at relevant national deliberative meetings and in a raft of processes where women’s voices matter as we step up efforts to actively promote and only participate in panels where women and girls are appropriately included – as experts, not just facilitators and moderators.

With this pledge, we reaffirm our support for the participation of women in decision-making processes to ensure we reap the benefit of collective decision-making. To this end, we call on all United Nations Staff in Ghana to ensure that qualified women are represented at meetings and processes organized and convened by the UN – moving forward. This will ensure that we are ‘walking the talk’ and helping towards the achievement of the SDGs, especially SDG 5.

In the coming weeks, the UN will work to engage external stakeholders – including the government – to drive the ‘No-Manel’ Campaign more broadly at the national and local levels.