Over 500 women’s rights organisations, GI-ESCR among them, plus feminist activists and allies have signed an open letter urging UN Women to ‘immediately rescind and repudiate’ its partnership with the asset management firm BlackRock, a firm that has holdings in fossil fuels, military & civilian arms manufacturing.

*UPDATE: UN Women, on August 23, confirmed their partnership with BlackRock is over “effective immediately”.

While the Memorandum of Understanding has not been made public, the partnership was announced in a UN Women press release (which was removed from its website on 25 July), declaring that the collaboration would ‘promote gender lens investing.’ 

The letter details BlackRock’s investments in industries that contribute to climate change and social instability, as well as the firm’s obstruction of measures to promote labor rights, corporate accountability for sexual harassment, and close gender pay gaps where it has shareholdings. It points out that BlackRock also holds large amounts of external private debt in Global South countries where it has resisted government requests to restructure or suspend repayments to accommodate national crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which affect public budgets to support women. 

We, along the signatory feminist organisations, demand UN Women assumes an important role in curbing corporate abuses of human rights and the environment, rather than partnering with the corporations committing the abuse.

A cross-UN review of its capacity to advance gender equality (a ‘Gender Architecture review’) is currently underway, marking an opportune moment to reinforce UN Women’s leadership role and institutional security within the UN. 

As a follow up action, feminists organised an online public event on Tuesday 16 August to highlight why UN Women needs to rescind the partnership BlackRock and set standards for its private sector partnerships. 

For further information contact:
Kerry Skiff, Press Officer, Friends of the Earth US: kskiff@foe.org
Margarita Salas, Communications & tactics strategist, AWID: msalas@awid.org 
Lindsay Bigda, Senior Communications Manager, WEDO: lindsay@wedo.org