Sunday
evening, a few hours before the official start of the 59th session
of CSW. A few more hours before the end document of this session, the political
declaration will be adopted at the UN General Assembly Hall.
Different
from other years is the end document going to be adopted on day 1 of the CSW,
instead of at the end. This means that negotiations have been taken place over
the last few weeks. Negotiations that proved to be particularly hard this year.
There was a harsh fight for removal of reference to ‘Human Rights’ throughout
the text. A fight that was put up by a block of known reactionary forces: Russia,
Indonesia, the African Group and the Holy See. The text that will be adopted
tomorrow unfortunately proofs who won this battle. By not connecting Gender Equality
directly to Human Rights there is a miss-out of the recognition that it is
impossible to fulfill Human Rights without achieving Gender Equality. Women’s
Human Rights are at danger of becoming a pick-and-choose menu. This undermines
the implementation of all the critical areas of the Beijing Platform for
Action. Missing as well is a strong link with Post-2015, reference to
contributions and recognition of women’s groups and movements and Women’s Human
Rights defenders, as well as specific areas that urgently need to be addressed.
To show our
disappointment about the final text of the political declaration, 974 women’s
rights and civil society organization worldwide have signed a statement:
Twenty years
after the adoption of Beijing, this version of the Political Declaration is not
what women need. There has been tremendous progress toward gender equality and the
realization of the human rights of women and girls. However, many of the gains
that women and girls have made are under threat and women and girls worldwide
face extraordinary and unprecedented challenges, including economic inequality,
climate change and ocean acidification, and rising, violent fundamentalisms. At
a time when urgent action is needed to fully realize gender equality, the human
rights and empowerment of women and girls, we need renewed commitment, a
heightened level of ambition, real resources, and accountability. This
Political Declaration, instead, represents a bland reaffirmation of existing
commitments that fails to match the level of ambition in the Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action and in fact threatens a major step backward.
See here for the whole statement, as well as translations in Spanish and French.
As it is always easy to focus on the negatives, highlighting here some
positives in the political declaration: Beijing Declaration and Platform for
Action is reaffirmed, which does have a strong Human Rights – Gender Equality
link; there is pledge to take concrete action to implement BPfA and eliminate
discrimination against women and girls; although there is not a strong link
with Post-2015, there is specific reference to the stand-alone Sustainable
Development Goal on gender (SDG5) as well as integrating a gender perspective
in the other goals.
Entering the 2 weeks of CSW everyone is asking what will happen now that the
negotiations about the end document are over. What ever happens, we are here,
and we are still full of energy. ‘Not without us about us’. So bring it on.
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Posted by Sanne Holtslag on behalf of WO=MEN Dutch Gender Platform =
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