Farhan Akhtar appointed as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador for South Asia

Bollywood Actor Farhan Akhtar was on 14 November 2014 appointed as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador for South Asia. Farhan is the first male ever to be chosen as a Goodwill Ambassador in the organization’s history.

Farhan will dedicate his efforts as UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador for South Asia towards the empowerment of women and girls and will serve as an advocate for UN Women’s newly launched HeForShe initiative in advocating for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

UN Women’s other Goodwill Ambassadors include British actress Emma Watson, Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman and HRH Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol of Thailand.

Background
An accomplished and well-respected actor-filmmaker-singer Farhan Akhtar has represented the voice of numerous concerned men on the important issue of gender equality and violence against women and girls in India through his Men Against Rape and Discrimination (MARD) campaign.

Farhan started his own campaign MARD to sensitize men and create awareness about the safety of women. The MARD campaign has successfully encouraged many actors to join this campaign and spread awareness. Corporations like Google have also engaged with the initiative to empower women through Internet literacy.

About UN Women
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to accelerate progress on meeting women needs worldwide.

The main roles of UN Women are:
• To support inter-governmental bodies in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms.
• To help Member States to implement these standards and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.
• To hold the UN system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress.