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CSW66 Blog: Nadia joins the Couch Support

Nadia @ the UN

Last weekend, the UN suddenly announced that it would open up its building for NGOs again immediately on the following Monday. This came as a complete surprise. 

I frantically struggled through the UN website to request a ground pass, not really believing it was going to be possible. I booked a flight, hotel, and a covid test time slot…

Just to quickly recap:

  • 2020: the 64th CSW was canceled at the very last minute because of the sudden spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • 2021: the 65th CSW took place virtually, except for a formal opening and closing session that only had limited New York based mission-staff present.
  • 2022: the 66th CSW was – after long unclarity – finally declared a hybrid event whereby NGOs were strongly discouraged form traveling to New York. All side events would be virtual, NGOs could not enter the UN, and only very limited number of delegates per Member State would be welcome inside the ‘informals’ – the sessions where the Agreed Conclusions are being negotiated.
Sanne & Nadia at Vienna Cafe in the UN Basement

Couch support
But here I am, in New York and with my ‘ground pass’ to enter the UN around my neck. I made it, and can join the tiny crowd of activists from the Women’s Major Group, Women’s Rights Caucus and others that meet and strategize over coffee in the basement Vienna Café and fill the hallway couches to support and pressure Member States delegations for better results.


In the negotiations room
Each country is currently allowed to have just 2 delegates in the negotiations room. The Netherlands is part of the EU negotiation team this year and therefore always needs one seat for our EU negotiator Robin de Vogel. Our NGO representative Sanne Van de Voort, and the delegates from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Cornelieke Keizer) and Education, Culture and Sciences (Lisanne Post) take turns inside the room.

Dutch Robin de Vogel is EU negotiator at CSW66

The process towards the Agreed Conclusions
Whereas we heard many complaints about the frustratingly slow and halting process of the negotiations last year, this year’s facilitator – the Ambassador for the United Nations in Germany – has so far shown skills at introducing Member States to German pünktlichkeit and the meeting on Friday even ended early! It would be interesting to find out if that ever happened before.

But the real fun starts next week, when the delegates will need to eventually “ad ref” every paragraph. Ad ref comes form “ad referendum”, which means that the text is provisionally agreed,  although subject to the whole outcome document being agreed to. Some paragraphs will continue to have text “in brackets” until the very last day, which means there is no agreement yet on specific wording or inclusion of certain text.

Pushback
It is during these negotiations that we see countries like Russia, Holy See (Vatican), Saudi Arabia, Cuba, China and others push back on much very basic-sounding women’s rights and gender equality language such as protecting women human rights defenders, supporting feminist organisations, explicitly mentioning girls instead of only women, and the need to be gender transformative, or at least gender responsive, in many areas of work including financing. The explicit mention of sexual and reproductive health and rights (srhr) is a repeating battle every year and any LGBTQI language highly contested. 

We expect a new version of the draft Agreed Conclusions sometime this week, and the actual negotiations will continue again on Tuesday. If all goes according to plan, the final text of the Agreed Conclusions will be accepted by consensus in the closing session on Friday afternoon.

 

CSW negotiations take place in the basement of this building!

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Coming up:
In the meantime, don’t forget to join lots of great online side events also in the coming 2nd (and final) week of the CSW! 

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Guidance
Want to know more about advocacy at the CSW? There are great resources available such as these by:

  • CHOICE for Youth & Sexuality here
  • WECF here
  • NGO CSW Forum here

Blog by Nadia van der Linde, Program Manager International Processes at WO=MEN Dutch Gender Platform
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