Skip to main content

Understanding the chaos at United Nations


Yesterday, 7th of April, which was the first day of the 47th Commission on Population and Development, the official negotiations took off. However, governments delegations as well as CSO representatives have not been sitting still over the weekend.

Even before the weekend, ‘the informals’ had already started: these informal-but-in-reality-not-so-informal negotiations provide countries (and country groups) the opportunity to give their first input for the Zero Draft. The Zero Draft is a document written by the chair of the Commission, and forms the first draft for the final outcome document of the week. The informal negotiations usually set the tone for the rest of the Commission: who will be in favor and who will be against certain population issues.

This is not as simple as it sounds, as there are many terms related to population and development that are considered controversial: access to safe abortion, sexual orientation & gender identity, sexuality education, gender equality – and believe it or not, but even human rights have been disputed.  Government delegations organize around these issues by having regional meetings, during which the delegations try to find common ground, map and estimate other country’s positions and to define strategies for the rest of the week. These strategies go from the EU taking a strategic, moderate position to avoid opposition, to ‘hard-core’  individual countries like Brazil and South Africa who aggressively push progressive language in the outcome document by trying to add more new paragraphs than the Arabic countries can delete.

At the same time, civil society organizations have been trying to organize themselves over the weekend by having strategy meetings. The amount of civil society members attending the CPD has never been as large – this is understandable, considering that this is the 20th birthday of the Commission of Population and Development.  But strategy meetings with over 200 members are complicated. How do we coordinate our efforts to push for progressive language in the final outcome document? Civil society groups have therefore divided themselves into sub strategy groups related to language, monitoring, advocacy, communications, etc. Also, updated country standpoints are shared, regional subgroups are identified, communication is arranged and daily briefings are scheduled.


In the meantime, the UN has been trying to facilitate the process of having a huge number of government delegations and civil society organizations present in their building. With little success so far – the conference rooms reserved are so small that not everybody fits in and negotiations are called off; UN ground passes are only provided for two days instead of the normal five; the UN building is still under construction;  and the Vienna café is still the only café in the building, which means bad coffee all week. At the same time, a huge amount of government delegates and members of civil society organizations keep running around, organizing, negotiating, lobbying, strategizing, opposing the opposition, stealing each other’s documents and fighting for the development agenda they stand for; that is the chaos of the UN.

by Floortje, from CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality
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