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Biographical Note

Noeleen Heyzer

Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

Ms. Noeleen Heyzer is the first woman to head the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), which is the biggest of the UN's five regional commissions, both in terms of population served and area covered.

Ms. Heyzer was the first Executive Director from the South to head the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the leading operational agency within the United Nations to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality. At UNIFEM, she worked on strengthening women’s economic security and rights; promoting women’s leadership in conflict resolution, peacebuilding and governance; ending violence against women; and combating HIV/AIDS from a gender perspective. In 1994-95, Ms. Heyzer played a key role in the preparatory process for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, including organizing 1000 NGOs in the Asian and Pacific region to develop the first ever NGO Action Plan. Ms. Heyzer played a critical role in the Security Council’s adoption of the landmark resolution 1325 (2000) on women, peace and security and undertook extensive missions to conflict-affected countries worldwide to ensure its implementation to make a difference in women’s lives on the ground.

Through her leadership, UNIFEM assisted countries to formulate and implement legislation and policies to realize women’s security and rights. This resulted, for example, in changes in inheritance laws for women, better working conditions for migrant workers, the inclusion of women as full citizens in the constitution of Afghanistan and as full participants in several peace negotiations and electoral processes. Ms. Heyzer led UNIFEM’s comprehensive restructuring to maximize performance, build knowledge and partnerships to deliver results. Consequently, UNIFEM increased its resources sevenfold, strengthened its ground presence and successfully advocated to put issues affecting women high on the agenda of the United Nations system.

Ms. Heyzer served on numerous boards and advisory committees of international organizations, including the UNDP Human Development Report, the Commission on Globalization of the State of the World's Forum, and the UNDP Eminent Persons Group on Trade and Sustainable Development. She was a founding member of numerous international women’s networks and has published extensively on gender and development issues, especially economic globalization, international migration and trafficking, women, peace and security. She convened and chaired the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace, served on the Board of President Ahtisaari’s Crisis Management Initiative, and was on the High-Level Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding chaired by Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen. Ms. Heyzer was a New Millennium Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York, an eminent speaker at the Asian Development Bank and Chairperson of the Advisory Group of the Programme on Women’s Empowerment in Muslim Contexts: Democratization from the Inside Out. Ms. Heyzer was also a member of the International Advisory Group of the Institute of Social Studies at the Hague. Ms. Heyzer successfully mobilized private sector partners such as Macy’s, CISCO, Citigroup and the Calvert Investment Fund to provide high value employment and market access to women and youth in conflict and tsunami-affected areas, and to the Arab States, as well as to set new standards for ethical investment.

Before joining UNIFEM, Ms. Heyzer worked as a researcher for the World Employment Programme of ILO, and was a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Ms. Heyzer was also Director of the Gender Programme of the Asian and Pacific Development Centre. In this role, Ms. Heyzer was a policy adviser to several Asian Governments and was instrumental in formulating national development policies, strategies and programmes from a gender perspective.

Born in Singapore, Ms. Heyzer received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from the University of Singapore and a doctorate in social sciences from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

Ms. Heyzer has received several awards for leadership, including the UNA-Harvard Leadership Award, the Woman of Distinction Award from the UN-NGO Committee on the Status of Women, the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW) “Women Who Make a Difference” Award in 2005 and the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal in 2004, given to “a person who has promoted, in action and spirit, the values that inspired Dag Hammarskjöld as Secretary-General of the United Nations and generally in his life: compassion, humanism and commitment to international solidarity and cooperation”. In recognition of her contribution to peace and justice through improving the rights of women, Ms. Heyzer was among the nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005.

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