A/RES/58/144 20 per cent of professional staff, and encourages the Secretary-General and the executive heads of the organizations of the United Nations system to intensify their efforts to meet the goal of gender balance within the United Nations system; 5. Welcomes: (a) The ongoing personal commitment of the Secretary-General to meeting the goal of gender equality and his assurance that gender balance will be given the highest priority in his continuing efforts to bring about a new management culture in the Organization; (b) The pledge of the executive heads of the organizations of the United Nations system to intensify their efforts to meet the gender equality goals set out in the Beijing Declaration 6 and Platform for Action;1 (c) The inclusion of the objective of improving gender balance in action plans on human resources management for individual departments and offices, and encourages further cooperation, including the sharing of best-practice initiatives, between heads of departments and offices, the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women and the Office of Human Resources Management of the Secretariat in the implementation of those plans, which include specific targets and strategies for improving the representation of women in individual departments and offices; (d) The decision, within the context of the new staff selection system, 7 to hold heads of departments and offices accountable for meeting the gender targets in departmental human resource action plans through their performance compacts; (e) The continuing designation of focal points for women in the United Nations system, and requests the Secretary-General to ensure that the focal points are designated at a sufficiently high level and enjoy full access to senior management, both at Headquarters and in the field; (f) The continuing provision of specific training programmes on gender mainstreaming and gender issues in the workplace, tailored to meet the special needs of individual departments, commends those heads of departments and offices who have launched gender training for their managers and staff, and strongly encourages those who have not yet organized such training to do so as soon as possible; (g) The formulation of a project by the Office of the Under-Secretary-General for Management to strengthen the efforts of the Secretary-General to achieve gender balance by adopting a more coordinated and integrated approach to this issue, with the purpose of setting and achieving verifiable goals to ensure that gender balance targets are attained by 2006; (h) The preparation of a research-based analysis by the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, to be presented to the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session, of the probable causes of the slow advancement in the improvement of the status of women in the United Nations system, with a view to elaborating new strategies for achieving gender parity; _______________ 6 Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 4–15 September 1995 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.96.IV.13), chap. I, resolution 1, annex I. 7 See ST/AI/2002/4. 3