Skip to main content

Financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women 2

Thank you Chair for the invitation to make an intervention in this rich debate on behalf of Hivos, a Dutch development agency. I am speaking also on behalf of the other Dutch NGO’s with ECOSOC accreditation attending this 56th CSW, which in their turn represent many other women’s rights organizations at home.

To start I would like to recall our excitement in 2008 that the M word, Money, was on the CSW agenda. Gender equality requires money and investments and so Money Matters indeed.

The Agreed Conclusions of CSW 52, finalised behind closed doors in the night after the closing ceremony, did not meet our expectations at all.

Women’s rights organizations in the Netherlands and Europe, having been present at the CSW 52, issued a statement, expressing their deep concerns that there were no meaningful commitments in the Agreed Conclusions related to financing for gender equality. No concrete targets and timetables and no strong mechanisms for effective tracking and monitoring of financial resources spent on gender equality.

Instead of scaling up resources to support the work of crucial gender equality stakeholders, the Agreed Conclusions of CSW 52 had been distracted by the renegotiations around the language of earlier agreed commitments. And in some aspects even weakening those earlier agreed commitments, amongst others by the addition of "bearing in mind national priorities" with respect to the recommended following actions.

Now that we are reviewing the Agreed Conclusions we can see that this escape route of the national priorities is widely used. In the crisis of the last years more and more governments are tiptoeing away from their commitments.

We are noting moreover the consequences of the fact that the Agreed Conclusions failed to address the need for adequate resources and a diversity of funding mechanisms to support the indispensable role of women’s organizations as the driving force of the agenda of gender equality and empowerment of women at all levels. More and more women’s rights organizations face severe budget cuts, forcing them to scale down or even to close down.

In that respect I would like to ask Ms Alpizar whether she could elaborate a bit about the financial resources of the LBT-rights based organizations. In the Netherlands we notice a shift with regard to government’s subsidies from women’s rights organizations to (single issue) LGBT-organizations.

Ms Patti ONeill I would like to ask whether she could provide us with an informed guess about the trend in funding since 2010, especially with respect of the support for the women’s rights organisations.

Ms Jeni Klugman rightfully concluded her written paper with the observation that addressing deep seated structural inequalities take time. She pleaded to counsel patience both within organisations as to the broader audience. We would say: yes changes do not happen overnight, and since we did not start yesterday and since we have lost precious time and money, do you agree that we need to counsel the sense of urgency alongside the patience for the tangible results and deep seated changes?

Thank you very much.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Women’s Rights Caucus Statement – Protect Women and Girls by upholding the Beijing Declaration

  The Women’s Rights Caucus, representing over 900 feminist advocates from around the world, urges you to oppose the proposed US draft resolution entitled  “Protection of women and girls through appropriate terminology.” Despite the title, we do not feel protected nor represented by this initiative. Download this statement as pdf.   Download this statement in Spanish.   On the heels of the first-ever recorded vote on the agreed conclusions of the annual meetings of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and in complete disregard of the significant opposition their proposal got in the negotiation room, the United States has circulated a new resolution proposal which attempts to falsely state that the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action agreed that  “gender” was defined as “men and women”. It attributes to annex IV of the Report of the Fourth World Conference of Women a meaning that was never agreed by Member States, effectively rewriting th...
Post a Comment
Read more

ARTivism for Change: Creativity as Resistance at CSW69

Artwork "Who can I trust with my story?" from ArtVism in Uganda During the 69th CSW, the Our Voices Our Futures (OVOF) consortium organised a creative ARTivism for Change space where bold protest sign-making, intimate film screenings, and thought-provoking feminist dialogues blended together. Over two days, March 12 and 13, 2025, artists, activists, and allies transformed the space into dynamic real-life canvases of empowerment, solidarity, and cultural and political resistance.   In the main space of the Blue Gallery participants engaged with various stations, including Button Making , Journaling with Art , Drawing , and Protest Sign Making . Participants moved between activities, creating powerful messages of resistance and hope. The creativity extended beyond the activities themselves. Access Denied The ACCESS DENIED campaign , initiated by WO=MEN, was set up to be a photo installation. It highlights the deep gap between the inclusive vision set forth at the 1995 Beijing ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Beat back the radicals!"

“We will beat back the radicals and we will fight all their falsehoods and we will help as best we can all the faithful UN delegations trying to help the unborn child. But, the Friday Fax and our presence at UN headquarters is not free. In fact, it is terribly expensive. Would you be able to make a sacrificial donation to our work of $500? $100? $50?” This quote is from a newsletter of an American based organization working to stop any agreement at the UN that might possibly be understood to mean that women can have a choice in their  reproduction. It is quite ironic to see the violence in the language, beat back the radicals, from a group who are working at the UN meeting devoted to ending Violence Against Women. Being here at the UN makes you feel in your body and soul that maintaining and advancing freedom of choice for women (and men) is a battle and not everyone fights fair. Some of our Dutch civil society friends attended a panel in which the two main speakers where ...
4 comments
Read more