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Showing posts from November, 2014

Conclusions at the Beijing+20 Regional Review Meeting

The second and last day of the Beijing+20 Regional Review Meeting at UNECE started with the panel-discussion on preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls. This proved to be the most popular item on the 2-day agenda, with lively responses from civil society in the room and a large number of member states waiting to make their statement. The Istanbul Convention was repeatedly brought up by member states as an important way of showing their commitment to elimination of violence against women and domestic violence. Besides progress on this issue there was a generally shared disappointed that this is still an issue that needs to be addressed, 20 years after the Beijing Platform for Action. Also, there was a general note that the increase in legislation in the different member states still lack behind on implementation. The Istanbul Convention is a convention of the Council of Europe establishing a legally binding definition that violence against women is a violation of

Vigilance at the Beijing+20 Regional Review Meeting in Geneva

This week marks two important events in the process towards the 59 th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW59). The CSW59 will be held in New York from 9 th to 20 th of March 2015, and this week the regional review meeting for the United Nations Economic Commission of Europe (ECE) region takes place. This means that all member states in the ECE region (EU countries, Caucasus & Central Asia and US & Canada amongst others) come together at the UN in Geneva to review their achievements and challenges during 20 years of policy development and implementation for gender equality: Beijing+20 Declaration and Platform for Action . This week provides the opportunity to align agendas for both civil society and member states, and to get a feeling of reactionary and progressive forces as we enter the negotiations for CSW59. In preparation, the Commision has asked all member states to provide a national review. This review addresses 12 critical areas of the Beijing