WO=MEN in New York

The panel at the Young people in post-2015 side-event Lotte Dijkstra is Dutch Youth Ambassador for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and reflects on her first time attending the Commission on Population and development. Waiting for my plane to depart, I have time to reflect on last week. It was an eventful week, where youth and SRHR were much debated topics. In this year’s Commission on Population and Development youth were notably present – both in delegations and in civil society. I might be biased in this respect, being young myself, but the words ‘youth’ and ‘adolescent’ also seemed to be on the lips of many less young delegates. After weeks of brainstorming, writing and revising, I began the week with delivering a statement on behalf of the Netherlands. The nerves that had been stacking up in my stomach all day, soon disappeared when I noticed the room was paying attention. Halfway trough, at the words “I’m here (…), not despite my age, but because of my age” ...

Friday 17 April, the last day of CPD48, began with a lot of tension in the air in- and outside Conference Room 4, the CPD plenary room of UN Headquarters. Day 4 had ended with a lot of contested paragraphs still on the table, with very little negotiation time left. During the morning briefing for progressive NGOs, the message was clear: "What we have as draft resolution text right now is not bad at all. Proposed paragraphs on SRHR and related issues only need minor changes, but are still contested. Countries and regional groups have until 11 am to discuss contested paragraphs and then until lunch to negotiate. We hope they will reach an agreement including strong paragraphs on our issues. But if there is no agreement, there will be a Chair's proposal. And as the Chair will then revert to agreed language and agreed language on SRH is pretty good, we will still be OK, even though we will lose text on sexual rights (SR)" With this message, we went to the delegates of ou...

It's day 4 of the 48 th CPD. This morning, the plenary session and negotiations were going on at the same time. Because the informal consultations were moved to a smaller room, only one person per country was allowed to participate in the negotiations. This generally is bad news: it is usually the Permanent Mission representatives that then head the negotiations and they have a tendency to care more about the diplomatic process than following laws, policies and commitments made by their government. In the case of Malawi, for example, government is progressive when it comes to comprehensive sexuality education. This is also reflected by the comments that the Malawi Minister of Youth was making at our side event yesterday. However, the Permanent Mission representative on the Malawi delegation did not want the terminology on CSE to be in the Malawi country statement in plenary. You can only imagine what this means for negotiations: he will not speak up for comprehensive sexuali...

Today, Wednesday 15 April, marked the third day of the 48th CPD. it was a day full of events, but with slow progress on the negotiations... Yesterday, the first 'negotiations' since the start of the official session (after a week of i nformals last week) took place. These negotiations were on the preambular paragraphs of the resolution and did not result in much agreement. Countries mostly stated and repeated their positions, which differed widely. The African and Arab groups were amongst others pushing for the deletion of references to reproductive rights and for the inclusion of a sovereignty clause. 20 other countries, including the Netherlands, were, instead, asking for a referral to sexual and reproductive health and rights. At the end of the day, the Facilitator promised to prepare a document with altered preambular paragraphs. This document with preambular paragraphs was shared around lunchtime today. Before preparative discussions with, within and between dele...

This week is one of the most crucial weeks in the year for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights advocates around the world. During the 48 th session of the Commission on Population and Development at the UN headquarters in New York, delegates from countries around the world discuss the integration of population issues in the post-2015 development agenda.   This is crucial, as it will set the agenda and priorities for programmes and interventions beyond 2015 . Simavi has brought different partners of the SRHR Alliances in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda to New York to make sure that the voices of African civil society are being heard, and the issues that are being faced by (young) people in communities in Africa are taken into account when making global commitments. Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and especially the rights of young people are crucial when it comes to development and global equality. The rights of young people, women and men to fully and healt...

Monday the 13th of April the 48th session of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) got started. Waking-up that morning almost felt like waking-up on one’sbirthday: the feeling of excitement and expectation. Who will join the party and what will be our presents? Are we going to get what we aimed for?  Like every birthday this start of a week full of discussions around sexual and reproductive health and rights brought some pleasant surprises and some big disappointments. This is the first part of a blog by Rineke van Dam, Adovacy Officer of RutgersWPF . For the whole blog please follow this link .  = RutgersWPF is a member of WO=MEN Dutch Gender Platform=

The official Political Declaration of CSW59 is now public, can be found here . The draft Resolution on the Methods of Work can be found here .

  Riekje Kok of the Global Network of Women’s Shelters has been attending the CSW for the first week. Below she reports on her activities in the promotion for the 3 rd World Conference on Womens’s Shelters, coming up in November 2015. In the afternoon of March 10 th all Dutch NGO’s present, joined the lunch for Dutch NGO’s with Minister Jet Bussemaker and two of the ministers from Aruba and St Maarten. It was a lively lunch with a lot of questions. Jet Bussemaker especially mentioned the success of LGTB side event of the day before. I used the opportunity to offer the three ministers a Red Heart, as a symbol against VAW. The red hearts are made by women survivors in Tunisia especially for the 3 rd World Conference and half of the price of a red heart goes to the 3 rd World Conference. From all over the world we want women to send us their picture wearing the red heart: to form a chain against Violence Against Women. (Red Hearts can be bought via the website: www.wordl...