Defending Gender Equality in the Multilateral Space We, the undersigned organisations, strongly aplaud the decisive demonstration by Member States, civil society and feminist movements defending multilateralism and negotiated norms and standards to advance gender equality that took place during the close of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70). On the last day of the CSW70, the room witnessed two unprecedented actions by the United States. In a first for the normally-uncontroversial resolution on women, the girl child and HIV/AIDS, they called for a vote. Afterwards the United States presented a standalone resolution intending to define “gender” under a narrow, binary understanding of “men and women”. Both initiatives were rejected by a majority of Member States. After failing to secure agreement during the Agreed Conclusion negotiations, and following the defeat of their amendment during their adoption, the United States introduced a stan...
Across global conversations today, many people are arriving at a shared intuition: the future cannot be built through domination, extraction, and control. If we call that intuition “matriarchal,” we don’t mean a simple reversal of power. We mean a different system. A system in which an economy is organized around care, relationships, and collective responsibility. A system in which women’s and girls’ access to justice includes dignified livelihoods, decision-making power, and economic autonomy. Such a future can feel abstract, even impossible. We have strong language to critique what is failing but we have fewer shared practices that make alternative realities workable. Our contribution at CSW70 NGO Forum was to offer a grounded pathway: community-led, place-based regeneration through multiple value creation , in which ecological, social, cultural, aesthetic, and financial value are held together rather than traded off. This work builds on over five years of learning with circular ...