WO=MEN in New York

On March 12 2010 the CSW adopted seven resolutions: # Women, the girl child and HIV/AIDS # Release of women and children taken hostage, including those subsequently imprisoned, in armed conflicts # The situation of and assistance to Palestinian women # Women’s economic empowerment # Eliminating maternal mortality and morbidity through the empowerment of women # Strengthening institutional arrangement of the UN for support of gender equality and the empowerment of women by consolidating the four existing offices into a composite entity # Ending female genital mutilation Downloads are available at the CSW-website . At the same website Moderator’s summaries of high level round tables and panel sicussions are to be foud: * High-level round table on “Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly and its contribution to shaping a gender perspective in the realization of the Millennium Developmen...

At 3 p.m. on the closing day of the 54th session of the CSW Secretary of State (US Minister of Foreign Affairs) Hillary Clinton addressed the CSW with an inspiring speech. The deadline for adoption of all the resolutions by 1 p.m. was unfortunately not met. Therefore many delegates could not attend Clinton’s address as they had to go back to the negotiating tables to seek agreement on final language for the resolutions on women’s economic empowerment and HIV/Aids. This did not dampen the spirit of Hillary Clinton and her audience. Invitees from civil society counted their luck as it opened up space for their attendance. Clinton recalled her ‘maiden’ speech at the NGO Forum in Huairou at the occasion of the Fourth World Conference in Beijing in 1995. That was an important event for herself, as first lady then. It was also important for women around the world, whom she inspired by underwriting the, then fresh, acknowledgement of women’s rights as human rights and human rights as women’...

On the one but last day of the CSW, the Dutch government in collaboration with AWID, Hivos and Mama Cash hosted a side event on the opportunities for governments to successfully invest in women’s empowerment and gender equality. At the CSW two years ago the Dutch government hosted a similar event. It then launched the MDG3 Fund, a new € 50 million fund in support of Millennium Goal 3: women’s empowerment and gender equality. The overwhelming number of applications submitted, more than 450, asked for multiple folds the amount of resources available. The Fund was raised to € 70 million. Forty five, predominantly international and regional, organisations have since received funding out of the MDG3 Fund. Their activities take place in 105 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Robert Dijksterhuis , head of the gender division at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, used the occasion of this year’s CSW to highlight the relevance of this new funding mechanism, its col...

Een foto-impressie. van Leontine Bijleveld

The rights of lesbian, bisexual women and transgender people (LBT) were not included in the Beijing Platform for Action, despite strong efforts of organizations present at Beijing. Theoretically, the rights of all minorities - handicapped women, widows, LBT etc were part of the 12 critical areas of concern, just not specifically named. This 15 year review showed that many of the actions in the Platform for Action have been watered down, many promises not kept. The idea that programs to stop violence against women would include violence against lesbian women proved to be false, and lesbian women are under attack in many countries, our rights ignored or denied. In more than 70 countries being lesbian, bisexual or trans is considered a crime, in at least five countries the penalty is death. The idea of education for all girls in many countries does not include lesbian girls. In schools in Uganda we learned, in a forum on homophobia in the education system organized by ILGA – the Internati...

Since mid February a petition on Amnesty International’s suspension on Gita Saghal, head of AI’s gender unit, circulates on the internet. It has been signed by internationally known feminists like Charlotte Bunch, Mallika Dutt, Sonia Corea, Yakin Ertuk, Ros Petchesky, Virginia Vargas. Salman Rushdie also signed. It is supported by various organisations including AWID, the Urgent Action Fund, Women living under Muslim Laws. So far not that many organisations and individuals based in the Netherlands did sign. High time to change that. What is it all about? Gita Saghal, Head of the Gender Unit at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London, is suspended for questioning Amnesty International’s partnership with individuals whose politics towards the Taliban are ambiguous. She raised a fundamental point of principle which is about the importance of human rights movements maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discriminati...

At thursday 4th March Ama participated in the WIDE breakfast caucus. She proposed on behalf of Wo=men to draft a joint statement criticising the exclusion of civil society from the Beijing +15 Review Process and to allign with the open letter of the international trade union movement (see blog dated March 5th. The proposal was accepted and Ama, Luisa Antolin and some others worked hard on the language. Friday March 5th a final draft was accepted by the European Caucus and circulated for endorsement. On International Women's Day Ama read out the statement in the High Level Plenary of the CSW. The statement is to be found on the Wide-website , as are the European and international organisations that endorsed the joint statement. WO=MEN is among those.

Young People Advocating for Sexual and Reproductive Rights at Beijing +15 Review Friday 5th March 2010 New York Young people from across the world have gathered together in New York to attend the 54th Commission on the Status of Women which also marks the 15 year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. These documents noted governments’ commitments to increase young people’s access to counselling, sexual and reproductive health information and services, and to promote their rights to privacy, confidentiality, respect and informed consent in this regard. Today, during the lunch break for government delegates, the coalition of young people made a statement for the support of their rights. Fifteen young men and women, wearing T-shirts with statements such as ‘Dead healthy women’, ‘unplanned pregnancies’ and ‘misinformed’, took a strong stand for achieving the goals that were set in Beijing fifteen years ago. “We demand access to comprehensive s...

Dat het VN-Vrouwenverdrag 30 jaar bestaat bleef niet onopgemerkt op deze CSW. Niet alleen werd er in talloze speeches aan gerefereerd: de middagsessie van vrijdag 5 maart was er aan gewijd. Drie experts presenteerden een paper – elk ruim 10 minuten. Het aardige is dat van twee papers een uitgebreide versie te vinden zijn op de website van de CSW (wel even naar 5 maart doorscrollen). Ze zijn de moeite waard om te lezen, voor geïnteresseerden in het VN-Vrouwenverdrag. Het ene is het paper van CEDAW-Comitélid Dubravka Šimonović, die betoogde hoe het Vrouwenverdrag aan de ene kant en het Beijing Platform voor Action aan de andere kant elkaar versterken. Het paper geeft een aardig overzicht van de ontwikkelingen de afgelopen 15 jaar. Het andere paper, van Professor Andrew Byrnes uit New South Wales (Australië), heeft een meer academische en juridische insteek - The Convention and the Committee: Reflections on their role in the Development of International Human Rights Law and as a Catalyst...

There is not much space for Civil Society to meaningfully engage with their governments and influence the current CSW processes. There is little transparency and access to information is limited. For many people registering and moving around during this CSW is a logistical nightmare. And to top it all off there is a feeling that this process is a bit of a façade. The declaration will not be negotiated, so there will not be a new outcome document. Member states have chosen to copy and paste the declaration from 5 years ago because they fear that opening up the declaration for negotiations will mean taking steps back. Is it possible that using a declaration that was made 5 years ago is more progressive than making a new declaration that takes the current context and new challenges into account? Is that type of thinking not inherently a sign of taking major steps backwards? Many Civil Society Organizations have come here to participate in the negotiations of this declaration. We were hopi...

On 4 March I attended a lively and rich discussion on some of the latest findings that are part of the larger multiple-year AWID research on Resisting and Challenging Fundamentalisms. AWID has undertaken eighteen in depth case studies to grasp how religious fundamentalisms, in different contexts and different religions, operate, how they appeal or not to women, how they impact on women’s rights and women’s activism. The case studies are a follow up to the 2008 AWID survey among 1600 women’s rights activists on their understanding of religious fundamentalisms. The respondents to the survey were adamant about the similarities between different religious fundamentalisms: preoccupation with controlling women’s bodies and sexuality, curtailment of women’s rights, freedom of movement and speech, and instigation of violence against women. Nadine Moawad, from Lebanon, shared the history of Meem, an LBT organisation in a country where homosexuality is criminalized, where sexuality education doe...

Een van de eerste gecoördineerde protestacties kwam van de vakbondsvrouwen. Er zijn ruim honderd vakbondsvertegenwoordigers uit alle continenten. Het zijn vooral leden van onderwijsbonden en publieke sectorbonden, naast de vertegenwoordigsters van vakcentrales en hun internationale, de ITUC. Al op dinsdag 2 maart publiceerden de Global Unions een open brief aan de secretaris generaal van de Verenigde Naties om uitdrukking te geven aan hun verontwaardiging over proces en inhoud van de CSW. De open brief is op het ITUC-PSI-EI UNCSW -blog geplaatst (met vertaalfunctie!). Daar kan ook adhesie worden betuigd. De brief wijst er op dat de bedoeling was tijdens deze CSW de balans op te maken wat er bereik was in alle 12 ‘areas of concern’ en wat er nog gedaan moet worden door regeringen samen met maatschappelijke organisaties, waaronder vakbonden. “Engaging civil society in this assessment proces is critical to the success of the UNCSW, but also to our collective succes in achieving gender eq...

Dinsdag 2 maart is in de Commission on the Status of Women een verklaring aangenomen ter gelegenheid van de vijftiende verjaardag van de Vierde Wereld Vrouwen Conferentie in Beijing. In de verklaring onderstrepen de regeringen nogmaals het belang van de uitvoering van het Beijing Platform for Action en beloven ze plechtig verdere actie te ondernemen. Waar dat uit bestaat blijft echter duister. Het is een bloedeloze, kale verklaring, te vinden op de Beijing +15 website – in de woorden van Luisa Antolin (WIDE) “everything is a copy paste of what we already agreed before.” De tekst van de ‘Declaration’ was, al voordat de CSW begonnen was, ‘uitonderhandeld’. Vanaf de loop van januari hebben via de missies van de landen bij de Verenigde Naties (Permanente Vertegenwoordiging) conceptteksten gecirculeerd. Verschillende landen hebben geprobeerd de verklaring op te tuigen, er meer ambitie in te stoppen, maar tevergeefs. Het hele proces heeft zich bijna geheel buiten de NGO’s om voltrokken. Da...

The colour of the 54th session of the CSW is Opaque: –adjective 1.not transparent or translucent; impenetrable to light; not allowing light to pass through. 2.not transmitting radiation, sound, heat, etc. 3.not shining or bright; dark; dull. 4.hard to understand; not clear or lucid; obscure: The problem remains opaque despite explanations. 5.dull, stupid, or unintelligent. (www.dictionary.com) Opaque is not a color. Ama

Anticipation and enthusiasm overflowed last Saturday. The sounds and sight of an excited mob of grey and white haired ladies is not one you can miss. This weekend there was a large gathering of all walks of women’s human rights defenders. All forms of women’s organizations was represented. They were mostly old and they were ALL very active. The organizers did a great job invited a variety of inspiring speaker such as Dr. Sima Samar, Charlotte Bunch, Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda and Alexandra Garita. Though it was great to have such a large gathering of women in all their diversity, there was also a great sense of frustration. This was both due to sense that not much has been achieved in the last 15 years and due to some logistical organizational shortcomings. At the end of the first day of the NGO forum, there was an open mic. The majority of women stood in line and waited (not always patiently) for a chance make themselves heard. There was such a hunger to be heard that there were very f...

Cordaid CSW 54 delegation, staff and partners, are sharing their CSW impressions as well as relevant reports and materials via the Cordaidpartners.com website . We hope you enjoy our posts! On behalf of the Cordaid CSW Delegation Margriet Tolsma and Nathalie Lasslop

Herstory was made on the second day of the CSW in New York. The Dutch government, with support from their Belgian and Portuguese counterparts, hosted a panel on human dignity for lesbian and bisexual women and transgender persons. It was the first, ever, official government organised event at the CSW on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. The meeting space was packed with good attendance by representatives from LBT organisations throughout the world, including many Hivos partners. Carlien Scheele, co-chair of the session and head of the Dutch government delegation, was adamant in her opening speech about the role of civil society organisations in making the event possible and tabling LBT issues at the CSW. A deliberate choice was made to have a co-chair from civil society in the South: Geeta Misra, Executive Director of CREA (India). CREA is a women’s rights organisation with a track record of working on women’s sexual and reproductive rights with an inclusive perspective...

Monday, March 1, on the opening day of the 2010 CSW session, women activists are handing out the brand new Newspaper The New Times for Women to government delegates and NGO representatives as they enter the UN premises and conference rooms. Two smiling and jubilant African women on the front page of this special edition mark the dawn of a new era. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has announced the creation of the new UN women’s rights agency. After many years of persistent lobby and advocacy by women’s rights activists under the leadership of the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) Campaign it is time for celebration at the CSW. Surprised responses. “Really!” “Has it come true?” “So the search for a UN Under Secretary-General to head the new women’s agency can start as of today?” Attentive readers soon sober up. At the bottom of the page they read: “This is news we would like to read. Turn the page to see where we stand now.” The special New Times for Women edition is laun...

Het veel ons alleszins mee. Het kostte ons vanochtend (zondag) maar tweeënhalf uur om het VN-toegangspasje te bemachtigen. Even na negenen sloten we ons aan bij de pakweg dertig vrouwen die al stonden te wachten. Het was niet koud, de zon scheen, de sneeuw aan de rand van de weg, slechts een enkele auto reed over de 1st Avenue. Nathalie Lasslop (Cordaid) was ons al voor, queeing samen met Jessica Nkuuhe uit Oeganda, directeur van Hivos-partner Urgent Action Fund Africa. Nkuuhe zit in het side-event van Cordaid morgen/maandag “Meet Women Human Rights Defenders”. Even later viel mijn oog op een tasje waarop niet alleen CEDAW-Working Group Initiative stond (altijd interessant voor de co-rapporteur CEDAW-schaduwrapportage Nederland), maar ook Hivos. Dat bleken afgevaardigden van een Hivos-partner uit Indonesië, waarvan Ireen Dubel onlangs in Jakarta collega’s had ontmoet. Toen het hek van het VN-gebouw open ging om 10 uur waren die dertig vrouwen voor ons verviervoudigd. Onder de queue-ju...