Inter Press Service looks at funding for U.N. Women six months after the organization launched. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “set an initial target of 500 million dollars as the proposed annual budget for the new gender-empowered body. But nearly six months later, the voluntary funding for U.N. Women (UNW) from the 192 member states has remained painfully slow,” IPS writes.

Actual contributions and pledges currently amount to $80 million, according to Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s permanent representative to the U.N. Puri spoke at the first regular meeting of the 41-member executive board of UNW earlier this week. Stephen Lewis, a former deputy executive director of UNICEF and co-founder of the international advocacy organisation AIDS-Free World, and Antonia Kirkland, legal adviser at Equality Now in New York, are also quoted in the article (Deen, 6/30).