Read
The evidence
The ask
A structured submission. Every recommendation names the organ that can act on it, the instrument, the precedent by document symbol, and the strongest objection to it.
The United Nations maintains an entity, a convention, a committee, a goal and fourteen days of observance addressed to women and girls. Each was established for documented reasons and this submission proposes reducing none of them. It says so verbatim: we do not propose reducing UN Women's budget, mandate or standing.
What is asked is the second column. No entity, office or named focal point in the United Nations system holds a mandate for the welfare of men and boys, no goal or indicator treats them as a group falling behind, and the word father appears nowhere in the 234 indicators of the global framework. The consequence is not rhetorical: outcomes that are already measured are never read as gaps to be closed, and what is not read as a gap is not funded, targeted or reported.
Five recommendations follow. Two cost a resolution. One costs a methods group. None requires a transfer of funds from existing programmes.
Every figure below carries its primary source. Figures are stated with their scope: which survey, which year, which population. Where a figure is contested or has been misused, the submission says so rather than leaving it to be discovered.
| Claim | Figure | Primary source |
|---|---|---|
| No global UN entity dedicated to men and boys | 0 at global level, checked against the UN system directory in August 2026. Two things qualify this and both are documented here rather than left for someone else to find. The WHO Regional Committee for Europe adopted a Strategy on the health and well-being of men by resolution EUR/RC68/R4 on 19 September 2018, two years after adopting a women's strategy; it named an owning programme and required reporting, and that reporting closed with a joint final progress report in 2023. Security Council resolution 2467 (2019), operative paragraph 32, recognises that men and boys are also targets of sexual violence in conflict and urges states to protect male survivors. Neither is a standing global entity of the kind UN Women is for women and girls, which is what this campaign asks for | UN system directory; WHO EUR/RC68/R4, adopted 19 Sep 2018; S/RES/2467 (2019) para 32 |
| UN Women contributions | USD 594.4M (2024, +5.6%); USD 562.9M (2023) | UN Women annual report 2024–25 |
| 14 UN days for women and girls, 0 for men and boys | 14 : 0 (list fetched live 14 Aug 2026; the fourteenth, the International Day of Recognition for Women Searchers of Missing Persons on 19 December, was on the list at the re-check of 2 September 2026, A/80/L.108). The count is not ours first: Nuzzo published it in 2020, and later snapshots read 15 and 16 as days were added. Our contribution is the live re-verification with every resolution number attached | UN. List of International Days; first counted by Nuzzo (2020) |
| 19 November at the UN is World Toilet Day | A/RES/67/291; International Men's Day not listed | UN. List of International Days |
| Aid marked for gender equality | USD 71.8bn/yr avg 2023–24 = 48.2% of screened bilateral ODA; USD 6.0bn principal | OECD DAC gender marker, OECD SDMX endpoint |
| …and that flow is now falling | −10% from 2023 to 2024 | OECD SDMX, our own published query on current-price commitments (recomputes to 10.3%); the OECD blog of 12 Mar 2026 states 13% on preliminary data and carries the falling characterisation |
| Spotlight Initiative seed funding | EUR 500M initial EU investment (2017) | UN. Spotlight Initiative |
| EIGE annual budget | EUR 9.43M (2024) | EIGE final annual accounts 2024 |
| European Women's Lobby scale | 2,000+ member organisations (EWL's own count; founded 1990) | EWL. About us |
| EWL funded by EU operating grants | 2026 operating grant under the CERV programme (CERV 2025-OG-SGA), EC DG Justice via EACEA | EWL. Financial support to third parties 2026 |
| SDG 5 framing; framework size | 9 targets, 14 indicators; 234 unique indicators (2025 revision) | UN Statistics Division |
| CEDAW and its protocol; no men's convention | Adopted 1979 (189 states parties); protocol adopted 1999, in force 2000 | UN Treaty Collection, ch. IV |
| Istanbul Convention monitored by GREVIO | CETS 210 (2011), Art. 66 | Treaty text (EUR-Lex) |
| Male suicide rate vs female | 12.4 vs 5.9 per 100k = 2.1× (global, 2021, crude rates); 3.1× high-income (crude); 3.8× US (2023) | WHO GHO · CDC NCHS brief 541 |
| Men as share of homicide victims | 81% of victims; male rate 9.3 vs 2.2 per 100k; ~⅔ of intimate-partner victims are women | UNODC Global Study on Homicide 2023 |
| EU workplace deaths | 3,106 of 3,321 fatal accidents = 93.5% men (2023); rate 2.88 vs 0.22 per 100k = 13× | Eurostat hsw_mi08 |
| Life-expectancy gap | 5.1 yrs global (WHO 2021); 5.2 yrs EU (Eurostat 2024); EU healthy-years gap ≈0.5 yrs | WHO GHO · Eurostat demo_mlexpec |
| US bachelor's degrees, men per 100 women | 71 (835,316 vs 1,179,719, 2021–22) | NCES Digest, table 318.10 |
| Boys behind girls in reading at age ten | Girls ahead in 51 of 57 countries at fourth grade, average gap 19 points (IEA press release, 16 May 2023); the international report's own exhibit prints 18 points across the same 57 countries. Both are IEA figures and both are held; they differ by document, not by dispute. | IEA PIRLS 2021, press release and international report |
| Father involvement and child outcomes | 22 of 24 longitudinal publications positive (16 SES-controlled) | Sarkadi et al. 2008, Acta Paediatrica |
| Paternal depression around the birth | 10.4% prenatal and postpartum (43 studies, 28,004 participants) | Paulson and Bazemore 2010, JAMA |
| Iceland's father month and divorce | 6.5 to 8.2 percentage points less divorce, causal design | Olafsson and Steingrimsdottir 2020, Economic Journal |
| Norway's 1993 father quota and conflict | 11% less parental conflict, quasi-experimental | Kotsadam and Finseraas 2011, Social Science Research |
| Fathers in the SDG indicator framework | 0 mentions of father or paternity in 234 indicators | UN Stats, global indicator framework |
| Paternity leave in world labour standards | no ILO convention; maternity avg 24.7 weeks vs paternity 2.2 | ILO 2022, Care at Work |
| EU tertiary attainment gap, 25–34 | Women 49.6% vs men 38.3% = 11.3 pp (2024); 4.3 pp in 2002 | Eurostat edat_lfse_03 · SDG 5 monitoring |
| Norway's Mannsutvalget | Appointed 26 Aug 2022; NOU 2024:8 delivered 24 Apr 2024; 35 measures; white paper due Nov 2026 | Regjeringen.no |
| England's men's health strategy | Published 19 Nov 2025; £3.6M over 3 years for suicide prevention | GOV.UK |
| Ireland world-first men's health policy | 2008–2013; Brazil 2009 (PNAISH); Australia followed 2010, strategy 2020–2030 | Dept of Health (IE) · health.gov.au |
| French Gates fund for boys-and-men work | USD 20M fund to Richard Reeves (2024), of a USD 1bn commitment to women and families | Pivotal announcement |
| Male suicides worldwide, 2021 | 493,456 men of 727,043 total (67.9%); about 56 per hour | WHO Global Health Estimates 2021 |
| Homicide pace, 2021 | 458,000 victims; 52 per hour; 81% male victims; ~90% male suspects | UNODC (UNIS press release) |
| Partner-and-family homicide deaths, 2021 | ~85,000 worldwide (derived: ~45,000 women and girls + ~11% of male victims) | UNODC / UN Women femicide brief |
| Norway 2021: male suicides vs partner/family homicide | 482 male suicides (FHI Dødsårsaksregisteret; 482 + 176 = the 658 FHI publishes); 12 partner-or-family victims among 29 victims in 23 cases (Kripos, Nasjonal drapsoversikt 2021, politiet.no) | FHI · Kripos |
| Ribic v. Croatia: contact enforcement failure | 3 meetings with his son before age 18; proceedings and enforcement totalling 13 years 11 months; Article 8 violation | ECtHR, no. 27148/12, 2 April 2015 |
| Male share of homicide victims and of prisoners | 81% of homicide victims (2021); almost 93% of the world prison population (2024 data, UNODC 2026); women are 56% of victims killed by partner or family | UNODC Global Study on Homicide 2023; UNODC Prison Matters 2026 |
| UN rules for women prisoners, none for men | 70 Bangkok Rules (A/RES/65/229, 2010) for women prisoners; no counterpart instrument for the 93% | UN General Assembly, Bangkok Rules |
| Sexual violence against boys in childhood | about 1 in 11 boys worldwide; girls' rate is higher and UNICEF states it in the same release | UNICEF, first global estimates on sexual violence in childhood (2024) |
| Attachment to father is largely not a copy of attachment to mother | In one study running the Strange Situation with both parents on the same 100 children, 42 were secure with one parent and insecure with the other: 26 insecure with mother and secure with father, 16 the reverse. Across 95 studies of observed attachment the two correlate r = 0.32 [0.29, 0.35], about 10 percent shared variance. Pinquart himself reads that as a moderate to large correlation, large against a field median of r = 0.20, so this is not a claim that the bonds are unrelated | Kochanska and Kim, Child Development 84(1), 2013; Pinquart, Infant and Child Development 31(6), 2022 |
| A father's sensitivity predicts security as strongly as a mother's | r = .21 [.14, .27] paternal against r = .26 [.22, .29] maternal, both derived inside one analysis of 174 studies and 22,914 dyads; the difference is not statistically significant. This supersedes the widely quoted r = .12 against r = .24, which set a 2011 fathers meta-analysis beside a 1997 mothers one, a 15-year gap the authors name as a limitation | Madigan et al., Psychological Bulletin 150(7), 2024 |
| How thin the father side of that literature is | Of 23,109 dyads, 1,626 were child-father and 21,483 child-mother, so fathers supplied 7 percent. The authors state they could not test moderators of the paternal effect or run sub-analyses for avoidant, resistant or disorganised attachment in father dyads, that paternal samples were overwhelmingly low-risk, and that no study of paternal sensitivity in the set was conducted outside North America or Europe | Madigan et al., Psychological Bulletin 150(7), 2024, Study Limitations |
| Nobody has tested whether the instruments measure both parents the same way | No published study reports configural, metric and scalar invariance for the Strange Situation or the observer-rated Attachment Q-Set across parent, which is what licenses comparing means between groups. Pinquart lists the untested assumption as his own limitation. In the largest Q-Set validation, 139 samples and 13,835 children, observers rated attachment to the mother in 54 studies and to the father in 1 | van IJzendoorn et al., Child Development 75(4), 2004; Pinquart, Infant and Child Development 31(6), 2022 |
| Norway's mandated guideline for these cases never mentions the article it is judged under | The Veileder for sakkyndig utredningsarbeid i foreldretvistsaker etter barneloven, issued 22 September 2022 by Bufdir on commission from the Ministry of Children and Families, governs court-appointed expert assessment in parental disputes. Searched in full: 'artikkel 8' appears 0 times, 'EMK' 0 times as a word, 'EMD' 0, 'menneskerett' 0, 'positive forpliktelser' 0. It does cite human rights once, at Grunnloven section 104 and CRC article 12 on the child's right to be heard. Never the convention under which Norway is judged in Strasbourg for failing to enforce contact | Bufdir, Veileder for sakkyndig utredningsarbeid i foreldretvistsaker etter barneloven, 22.9.2022 |
| Father absence, causal-design evidence | 47 studies using sibling fixed effects, natural experiments and matched designs; effects survive for school completion, behaviour and adult mental health, and do not for cognitive test scores | McLanahan, Tach and Schneider, Annual Review of Sociology 39 (2013) |
| Divorce and adult outcomes, 5 million children | divorce at ages 0 to 5 cut income at 25 by 9%, raised teen births 73%, mortality 35%, incarceration 43%, comparing siblings exposed for different lengths of time | Johnston, Jones and Pope, US Census Bureau CES Working Paper 25-28 (2025, not peer reviewed) |
| Distance from the non-resident parent | mediates 22% of divorce's effect on teen births (p < .001); median distance 4 miles in the divorce year, past 10 a decade later; the parallel share for child mortality is not significant | Johnston, Jones and Pope, CES Working Paper 25-28 (2025) |
| Paternal support and adolescent delinquency | r = -.22 for poor paternal support against r = -.14 maternal, across 119 samples, concentrated in father-son pairs | Hoeve et al., Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 37(6), 2009 |
| Paternity leave shocks, opposite signs | Norway 1993: +0.045 SD on exams at 16 (SE 0.022). Sweden 1995: about -0.03 SD overall, -0.07 for sons of non-college fathers | Cools, Fiva and Kirkeboen, Scand. J. of Economics 117(3) 2015; Avdic et al., IFAU WP 2023:25 (not peer reviewed) |
| The UN has known since 2004 | CSW's 48th session adopted agreed conclusions titled 'The role of men and boys in achieving gender equality' on 12 March 2004, recording that 'while men and boys sometimes face discriminatory barriers and practices, they can and do make contributions to gender equality'. Read it whole: the document is overwhelmingly about bringing men into the work for women's equality, that acknowledgement sits in a subordinate clause in paragraph 2, and paragraph 5 requires that resources for it not compromise women's. Work on the main theme has continued since. What the subordinate clause describes still has no entity, no focal point and no indicator attached to it. This is not a promise broken. It is something recognised and never assigned | UN Commission on the Status of Women, 48th session, agreed conclusions as endorsed by ECOSOC. Two texts exist and the quotation above is the endorsed one; the advance unedited version reads “men and boys, while some themselves face” and is at csw48/ac-men-auv.pdf |
| Reading gap, PISA 2022 | girls ahead of boys by 24 score points, OECD average; 31% of boys vs 22% of girls below Level 2 | OECD, PISA 2022 Results Volume I |
| Reading gap at fourth grade, PIRLS 2021 | girls ahead in 51 of 57 countries, average 19 points; no country where boys lead significantly | IEA, PIRLS 2021 International Results in Reading |
| Upper secondary enrolment gaps by direction | 73 countries where the gap runs against boys, 48 where it runs against girls | UNESCO 2022, Leave no child behind: global report on boys' disengagement from education. ISBN 978-92-3-100520-6, DOI 10.54675/BDLL3314, 147pp, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. unesdoc refuses automated requests, so cite the DOI |
| Blind versus non-blind grading | boys score relatively higher when the marker cannot see the name; 9 of 9 subjects in Israel, 0.32 SD swing in French grade 6 maths | Lavy 2008 (JPubE); Terrier 2020 (EER); full set on the education page |
| Court custody outcomes by parent sex | not published as official statistics in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England and Wales; proof country by country on the family law page | The paper wall, section 02 |
| Separated/divorced men's suicide odds | Divorced men OR 2.82 vs married; separated men OR 4.82; separated under 35 over 8x (75 studies, 30 countries, 29 meta-analyzed); risk greatest in the immediate aftermath, 13.20x in the 30 days after a separation is lodged (Naess 2021, cited within) | Wilson et al. 2025, Psychological Bulletin |
| States' Article 8 duty to enforce parent-child contact | Violations found incl. Ribić v. Croatia (2015), Strumia v. Italy (2016), Kuppinger v. Germany (2015) | ECtHR (HUDOC) |
| Child support owed despite child kept from father in breach of settlement | HR-2024-1686-A, 23 Sep 2024, unanimous | Norges Høyesterett |
| Refuge bedspaces in England, May 2024 | 33 dedicated to men vs 4,551 for women (Routes to Support census) | Women's Aid Annual Audit 2025 |
| Male shelter access in the Nordics | Norway: statutory since 2010, 308 of 1,008 beds; Denmark: equal-access law passed 4 Apr 2024 | Bufdir · Mandecentret |
| Male domestic-abuse victims (context for the above) | England & Wales yr to Mar 2025: 1.5M men (6.5%) and 2.2M women (9.1%); women bear more severe, repeated abuse | ONS |
| Chiswick Women's Aid. Britain's first women's refuge | founded 1971 by Erin Pizzey | BBC News (2021) |
| After 'Prone to Violence' (1982): death threats, police protection, left Britain | as reported 1997 | The Independent (1997) |
| Toronto 2012: doors barricaded at Warren Farrell lecture; police cordon; one arrest | 16 Nov 2012; ~100 protesters | The Varsity · Maclean's |
| Farrell served on the board of NOW's New York City chapter | three terms, early 1970s | The Baltimore Sun (1993) |
| University of York withdrew its International Men's Day plan after a protest letter | Nov 2015; ~200-signature letter; 1,000+ counter-petition | BBC News |
| Movember funding for men's health | more than AUD 1.8bn funded since 2003 (≈ US$1.2bn; its own reporting) | Movember. About us |
| US 'deaths of despair' are mostly male | nearly three in four (suicide, overdose, alcohol). The male share is compiled by AIBM and we cite it as such. The concept and the mortality series are Case and Deaton's and are registered separately, together with their finding that the rise runs in parallel for both sexes | Share compiled by AIBM; concept and series Case and Deaton |
| Women among UN permanent representatives | 7% of 2,800+ since 1947; ~21% in 2024 | GWL Voices. Women in Multilateralism |
| Norway's support to UN Women and UNFPA | NOK 100.3M + 589.6M ≈ NOK 690M for 2026, unchanged from 2024–25 | Regjeringen.no (MFA) |
| UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity exists | Mandate created by Human Rights Council resolution 32/2 (adopted 30 June 2016) | UN. A/HRC/RES/32/2 |
| Violence against women (conceded context) | ≈1 in 3 (31.6%; ~840M women), partner or non-partner sexual violence; 2023 estimates | WHO |
| Maternal deaths (conceded context) | 700+ per day in 2023 (~260,000 in the year) | WHO fact sheet |
| Child marriage (conceded context) | ~12 million girls married before 18 each year | UNICEF |
| The aid reporting schema has no field for who a project is for | 70 CRS++ reporting items in Annex 4; none is a beneficiary, target-group, sex or age field, for either sex. The only field named target is field 17, Geographical target area, which records where the money goes rather than who it is for. | OECD DAC, Converged Statistical Reporting Directives DCD/DAC(2026)14/ADD1/FINAL, Annex 4, approved by the DAC 28 May 2026 |
| The EU accession corpus, four rounds | 37 country reports, 2 229 191 words, 2022 to 2025, none sampled | European Commission, enlargement country reports 2022 to 2025 |
| IPA III financial envelope | EUR 14 162 000 000 for 2021 to 2027 | Regulation (EU) 2021/1529, Article 6(1), OJ L 330, 20.9.2021 |
| IPA III carries a numeric climate target | 18 per cent of the envelope, rising to 20 per cent by 2027 | Regulation (EU) 2021/1529, OJ L 330, 20.9.2021 |
| Gendered words in the IPA III regulation | gender 19, gender equality 12, women 11, girls 7, men 1, boys 0, in 14 486 words. The single occurrence of men is inside the fixed phrase equality between women and men, and no line pairs a gender word with a percentage. | Regulation (EU) 2021/1529, OJ L 330, 20.9.2021 |
| Girls and boys across the accession corpus | girls 122, boys 36, across 2 229 191 words. Raw occurrence counts, with no rule applied about tables, sentences or verbs. | European Commission, enlargement country reports 2022 to 2025 |
| The accession recommendation that names boys | 1 recommendation, on HPV vaccination, Turkiye 2025. Most recommendations in the corpus name neither sex. | Turkiye 2025 report, SWD(2025) 759 final |
| Deaths of despair rise in parallel for both sexes among the least educated | Case and Deaton find the rise runs in parallel for men and women without a high school degree, and that these deaths increased in all parts of the country and at every level of urbanization | Case and Deaton, Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2017 |
| The UN study on children deprived of liberty measures a 94 per cent male majority, and its recommendations chapter does not use the word boys | Paragraph 35: 94 per cent of detained children in the administration of justice and in armed conflict and national security are boys, 67 per cent in migration detention, 56 per cent in institutions. Chapter VIII, the recommendations, which runs to the end of the note at 2317 words counted whitespace separated from its heading: children 65, girls 1, boys 0. Boys are named 7 times elsewhere in the note, so it is not silent on them | A/74/136, note by the Secretary-General transmitting the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, 2019, paragraph 35 and chapter VIII |
| The recorded world aid response to ending the exploitation of boys in Thailand | USD 50: one disbursement, total commitment 0, on the GlobalGiving appeal 'End the Exploitation of Boys in Thailand' (IATI activity US-EIN-300108263-GGProj:24026, planned 2016-05-18 to 2017-01-07). Held raw record: research/iati-male-specific-full.json, checked field by field against the datastore row in the fact register, section 20. | IATI datastore (Code for IATI), raw activity record |
| Maternal mortality ratio, global: the line the machinery watches, measured yearly | 460.4 (1985) to 197.3 (2023) per 100,000 live births, 39 yearly points. Held series: research/marker-outcome-series.json, queried 2026-08-27. Stated as two measured points, not as a causal claim about any institution. | WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator MDG_0000000026 |
| The gender marker's own limit, in its own handbook | "The marker cannot and does not intend to measure the outcome or impact of a programme or project. It must be complemented by monitoring and evaluation instruments to assess this." (2016 Handbook, p. 9; near-verbatim in the 2025 edition, read 2026-08-30). Also p. 5: the marker "is based on donor intentions at the design stage". | OECD DAC, Handbook on the OECD-DAC gender equality policy marker, 2016 and 2025 editions, both held |
| Marker data are descriptive, by the directives, continuously since 2002 | "Policy marker data are descriptive rather than quantitative": verbatim in every reporting-directives edition held from 2002 to 2026 (2002 Annex 6 para 3 p. 107; 2007 para 86 p. 114; 2018; 2024 para 4; 2026 para 214 and Annex 19 para 4), governing all eleven markers. | OECD DAC reporting directives, DCD/DAC(2026)14/FINAL and predecessors, held |
| Aid marked for gender equality, verified at the OECD endpoint | USD 71.8bn per year average commitments 2023 to 2024, 48.2 per cent of screened bilateral allocable ODA, USD 6.0bn principal purpose; the flow fell about 10.3 per cent from 2023 to 2024 in current prices. Commitments, not disbursements; the marker records the objective, not a target group. | OECD SDMX, DSD_GNDR@DF_GENDER, queried directly |
| The marker series run; the men-and-boys series cannot | Gender-marked money runs unbroken 2002 (USD 4.46bn) to 2024 (67.9bn), peak 75.6bn in 2023; in 2022 all 33 DAC donors marked aid for gender equality, USD 65.1bn. Every other marker has a first data year (governance 2002, RMNCH 2010, nutrition, disability and DRR 2018). A men-and-boys series is empty across the whole range: absent, never zero, because no instrument exists with which looking could occur. | OECD SDMX per-marker, per-year queries (DSD_GNDR, OTHMRKR, RIOMRKR flows) |
| No beneficiary field exists in the aid reporting system, for either sex | All 70 CRS++ reporting items in Annex 4 of the directives: none is a beneficiary, target-group, sex or age field; the only field named target is geographical target area. The DAC states the gender marker "focuses on gender equality as an objective". | DCD/DAC(2026)14/ADD1/FINAL, Annex 4, read in full |
| The handbook's men-and-boys rule, with its own worked examples | Men-and-boys activities score on the gender marker when men "work with women and girls to transform unequal power relations" (2016, p. 19, FAQ 7). Excluded in the handbook's own examples: male youth employment not addressing named gendered barriers, and alcohol-abuse prevention among disadvantaged men. Qualifying example: support services for male refugees who have experienced sexual and gender-based violence. | OECD DAC gender marker Handbook, 2016, FAQ 7, held |
| Norway 2023: the male beneficiary class is zero of 7,270 rows | All 7,270 rows of Norway's 2023 country-allocable CRS grant microdata swept for male-naming text; all 232 male-naming rows (71 distinct activity texts) classified one by one with hashed receipts: zero aimed at men's own outcomes. | OECD CRS bulk microdata, Norway 2023; classification files and receipts published in the project archive |
| The world's male-directed ODA-grant class, 2023 | USD 61.9M across the official CRS 2023 file (327,278 rows, 106 donors), 99.8 per cent of it voluntary medical male circumcision as HIV prevention; the non-grant remainder adds about USD 2.1M more of the same procedure. Multilingual audit and control sample published. | OECD CRS bulk file 2023, read in full; method files in the project archive |
| The IATI male-specific sweep, with its own hypothesis not supported | 35,337 activities swept, 378 male-specific rows classified. Pre-stated instrumentalisation hypothesis NOT supported by count: 139 beneficiary against 70 instrument. By money 423.6M beneficiary against 90.5M instrument, but 336.4M of the beneficiary money is circumcision programming; with that procedure removed the split is 50.9 instrument against 49.1 beneficiary. Of every beneficiary dollar, 79 to 80 cents is a circumcision (own recount 80.1). | IATI datastore (Code for IATI), full classification published for recoding |
| NIH FY2023 title census, corrected figure of record | 85,131 projects as read 2026-08-25; after removing sex-specific biology without a counterpart from both sides: 250 male-named against 561 female-named, 2.24:1 by count, 1.88:1 by money (USD 118.5M against 223.1M). 42.0 per cent of male-named projects are HIV/STI work; 3 of 250 concern mental health. Titles measure naming, not subject matter. | NIH RePORTER API, preregistered census, result files published |
| Twenty-five funders, eighteen countries and blocs, one method | Biomedical research names the sexes at near parity, 428 against 458 (1.07:1). Research about a sex as its subject, all fields and no exclusion applied: 1,379 male-named against 3,738 female-named (2.71:1), so research about men exists at volume. Participation-and-equity programmes naming a sex: four male against 144 female, reported as counts, never a ratio. An earlier pooled comparison beside NIH compared two bases and is withdrawn in print. English-title funders only: a selection, not a world sample; seven funders or access routes could not be counted. | OpenAIRE API plus six funders' own APIs; definitive census file published |
| Canada tri-agency census, three domains | CIHR 3.83:1 on the NIH basis (36 against 138), with 43.9 per cent of male-named projects HIV/STI/prostate against NIH's 42.0, a landed prediction. NSERC post-exclusion: two male-named against 22. SSHRC: research about the group 5.3:1; participation-and-equity 15.0:1 (3 against 45; SSHRC year FY2018 against FY2023 for the others, ordering robust). | Canadian tri-agency open data |
| The library census with its replicated controls, and the measures it killed | UN Women digital library: of 970 publications counted in full text (971 harvested, one failed extraction excluded), 320 mention girls and never boys (girls 4,741 times, boys 0) against 4 the other way; among 854 child-mentioning documents, about 80:1. Same census, same rules: WHO 4.23:1 (55/13 of 105), World Bank 5.00:1 (70/14 of 258). Two preregistered measures were killed by these controls and are published as withdrawn. Report as 320 against 4, never a share; the multiple of the baseline is the finding. | UN Women digital library, WHO IRIS API, World Bank OKR API; preregistrations and corpus lists published |
| The child-justice guidance, counted | GC10 (2007) plus GC24 (2019): 24,043 words, the word boys 0 times, counted with a control word. The governed population: in the administration of justice and in armed conflict and national security contexts, 94 per cent of detained children are boys (A/74/136 para 35, reg-082). | UN CRC General Comments 10 and 24, both held and counted |
| The dropped phrases between the Global Study and its UN summary | discriminatory treatment: 2 in the 804-page study, 0 in A/74/136. stereotypical views: 1 against 0. harsher treatment: 2 against 0. not against boys: 1 against 0. discrimination against boys: 4 against 0. The study's heading Discrimination against Boys stands at pp. 256 to 259 and its recommendation at p. 275. | UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty and A/74/136, both held, diff published |
| The WHO indicator registry, corrected against our own argument | Raw 57 female-only against 6 male-only indicators: forbidden here, since 43 of the 57 concern pregnancy and other no-counterpart conditions. Corrected: 13 female-only without a male counterpart against 5 male-only without a female counterpart, about 2.6:1; all five male-only are STI surveillance, none measures suicide or occupational death. | WHO GHO indicator API, full registry read |
| The pooled-fund hop: both ends published, joined at neither | MPTF Gateway API, 2016 to 2026 window: Norway deposited USD 1,417,800,011.89 into 75 pooled funds (all purposes, never juxtapose with UN Women without saying so); UN Women as implementing organization carries USD 835.1M of budget across 117 fund windows. Every published ledger records one hop; none attributes an origin state's pooled money through to a destination entity. | MPTF Office Gateway REST API, raw rows stored in the project archive |
| UN Women's own funding structure, from its auditors and its portal | Audited 2023 revenue USD 619.06M, 94 per cent voluntary contributions, mainly earmarked (UN Board of Auditors, A/79/5/Add.12). Largest single funder in 2023 and 2025: the UN's own MPTF Office (USD 51.9M and 70.8M, all non-core). European Commission second in 2025 at USD 49.5M, roughly double its 2023 level, ahead of every member state. | A/79/5/Add.12, held and hashed; UN Women transparency portal CSV, held |
| UN Women's contribution volume and partner count, 2024 | USD 594.4 million in total contributions received in 2024, from 177 funding partners, per UN Women's Highlights 2024 to 2025 (2024 unaudited at publication; 2023: USD 562.9M). The transparency portal's 2025 page shows 161 partners as recorded 20 August 2026: different year, different source, never mixed. Contributions are also never mixed with IPSAS revenue (USD 619.06M). | UN Women, Highlights 2024 to 2025 |
| UN Women's establishment instrument | Established by General Assembly resolution A/RES/64/289, adopted 2 July 2010, operational 1 January 2011, consolidating four existing UN women's offices (paragraph 49). The resolution is held in the project archive. | UN General Assembly, A/RES/64/289 |
| Women's share of UN professional staff, 2025 | 50.4 per cent of the Professional and higher categories system-wide in 2025, a figure the report calls a historic milestone; 48.8 per cent as at 31 December 2023; 17 entities at parity in June 2025 against 5 at the strategy's launch in 2017; Senior Management Group parity maintained since 2018. Document held. | A/80/260, report of the Secretary-General on the improvement in the status of women in the United Nations system, 2025 |
| Women's share of UN professional staff, 2004 | 39.7 per cent of the Professional and higher categories (1,772 of 4,459 staff, paragraph 48); already 52.2 per cent of 469 staff at the P-2 entry level. Document held. | A/59/299, report of the Secretary-General, 26 August 2004 |
Beyond this table, four topic dossiers and one documented timeline carry the detailed record, each fact with its own primary source and verbatim quotation:
Each row below is a document symbol, a date and a count of whole words. None of it requires trusting this campaign: the documents are served by the United Nations and the counts can be reproduced with a search box in an afternoon. Two rows run against the argument made here and are in the table for that reason.
| Document | What it is | Count |
|---|---|---|
A/74/13611 Jul 2019 |
Secretary-General’s note, recommendations chapter The full study finds boys “often face discriminatory treatment” and are 94% of children detained in justice, conflict and security settings. |
girls 1, boys 0 |
CRC/C/GC/102007 |
Children’s rights in juvenile justice, 13,129 words States the Committee’s own principle: girls need attention because they are a small group and easily overlooked. |
girls 3, boys 0 |
CRC/C/GC/2418 Sep 2019 |
Children’s rights in the child justice system, 10,914 words Paragraph 40, on discrimination, names girls, children discriminated against on sexual orientation or gender identity, and children with disabilities. |
girls 1, boys 0 |
CCPR/C/GC/352014 |
Article 9, liberty and security of person, 10,381 words Runs against the campaign and is included for that reason. Paragraph 3 lists who the article protects and begins “girls and boys”. The sentence exists and is in force. |
girls 1, boys 1 |
A/HRC/45/142020 |
Independent Expert on older persons, the data gap conundrum Paragraph 77 flags rising suicide among “persons aged 75 and over”. Paragraph 47 notes existing guidance on age-and-sex-disaggregated data “applies to older women only”. |
no sex attached |
A/HRC/54/262023 |
Independent Expert on older persons, abuse and neglect Also runs against the campaign. States that abuse of older men is hard to identify because “older men are often excluded from studies on domestic abuse”. |
boys 0, older men named |
Separately, a census of the Human Rights Council’s thematic special procedures on 19 August 2026 found sixteen mandates whose object is a population, including persons with albinism, persons affected by leprosy and their family members, and peasants and other people working in rural areas. None takes men or boys as its object. OHCHR states 46 thematic mandates; extracting its own listing yields 45, and both figures are published because they could not be reconciled.
What the record does not show. It does not show a decision by anybody, and none is alleged. It does not show a United Nations-wide practice: the Human Rights Committee names girls and boys together as a matter of routine and has since 2014. What it shows is that where a document is specifically about a system men or boys are the majority of, the word is more often absent than present, and that the sentence which would fix it has already been written and adopted elsewhere in the same system.
An entity, office or named focal point whose mandate is the welfare of men and boys: collect the data, publish the reports, hold the seat.
Stated against ourselves. The cheap version of this is not a new agency, it is an independent expert appointed for three years, which is exactly what resolution 32/2 created for a contested subject with no prior mandate. The honest limit: a draft needs at least one sitting member State willing to put its name on it, we have none, and that resolution took five years of groundwork and forty-two States on the face of the draft before it passed.
General Assembly resolutions for International Men's Day and the Day of the Boy Child, the same instrument that created the Day of the Girl Child in 2011.
Stated against ourselves. Canada tabled the Day of the Girl Child and it went from introduction to adoption in six weeks, without a vote. The honest limit, and it is new: on 5 September 2025 the Assembly put consideration of all new international days on hold for its eighty-first and eighty-second sessions, and the eighty-first opens on 8 September 2026. On a realistic timetable the earliest this can be taken up is late 2028, and it will then be bundled into one resolution with every competing proposal.
The framework already breaks many indicators down by sex, including workplace deaths and suicide. What it never does is set a target where men are the group falling behind, so the numbers are collected and never read as a gap to close.
Stated against ourselves. In 2018 the United Kingdom's statistics office tabled a report and the Commission established a working group on age-disaggregated data at the same session. The honest limit: only a national statistics office can table it, so the real addressee is Statistics Norway or Statistics Denmark and the Commission only through them, and sex-disaggregation already has an owner there, so a proposal built around sex would most likely be referred into the existing gender statistics programme rather than given a group of its own.
A published national strategy, as Ireland (2008), Brazil (2009), Australia (2010) and England (2025) already have.
Stated against ourselves. Any NGO may file a written submission to a country's universal periodic review, with no consultative status required, and this is the one step in the whole document a small coalition can take by itself. The honest limit: the office that compiles them caps its summary at ten pages across every submission received, so ours may survive as one sentence, and whether it becomes a recommendation is decided by other States in the room.
A time-boxed public commission on boys' and men's equality challenges, reporting openly, and required to report again on what was implemented.
Stated against ourselves. A recommendation from another State during a country's review, recorded in the outcome report and either supported or noted. The honest limit: it binds nothing. There is no timetable and no sanction, only the record. That is also why this ask now carries the reporting requirement: Norway's commission delivered thirty-five measures, and the follow-up is the part that did not happen.
Every figure was verified against a primary source before publication, then re-checked by an adversarial pass instructed to discard rather than keep when uncertain. Corrections are published rather than made silently. Claims that failed verification are published too, because a submission that hides its failed claims has already told the reader what its surviving ones are worth.
On thin evidence. This submission states where its evidence is weak. That is not a concession that the underlying problem is small. The UN's own indicator on sexual violence in childhood, 16.2.3, is written to cover young women and men alike, and the comparable data collected under it covers roughly 68 countries for women and roughly 12 for men. The indicator excluded nobody; the measuring did. Where the record here is thin, it is thin because nobody was assigned to collect it, which is the substance of the recommendations rather than an argument against them. A reader is entitled to ask what would be known by now had the second column been counted for the same fifty years as the first.
The following claims circulate widely in this field. This campaign checked them and refuses to make them:
A further 154 refused claims are published alongside the topic dossiers, and the complete list travels with the evidence base in facts.json.
Manderådet, the Danish Men's Council (manderaadet.dk), and MannsForum, the Norwegian men's and fathers' organisation (mannsforum.no).
Registered entities. Manderådet is a registered Danish voluntary association (frivillig forening), CVR 41719273, registered 30 September 2020, in Det Centrale Virksomhedsregister. MannsForum is a registered Norwegian association (forening), organisasjonsnummer 996534081, in Enhetsregisteret at the Brønnøysund Register Centre. Both entries verified against the national registers on 20 August 2026.
Still to be completed before this document is sent: a named contact with a title for each organisation, and each organisation's position on consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, including the route being pursued where status is not held. This section stays visible until those are supplied. The role address on this domain is now contact@unformentoo.org, above, and how this initiative is funded is published in full at unformentoo.org/contribute.html, including what it costs to run and what will be refused.
unformentoo.org · independent research by Mikal Steen Monslaup, supported by Manderådet and MannsForum · version 0.16, 4 September 2026
If any figure in this document is wrong, write to contact@unformentoo.org and we will correct it and publish the correction, dated.