WO=MEN in New York

Yesterday Stefan Hennis, Board Member of CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality   and youth representative in the Dutch delegation presented his statement in the Plenary of the 47 th session of the CPD. Stefan spoke very passionately about his personal experience on agenda item 4, which dealt with the national experience in population matters. Delegates and CSO representatives in conference room 1 were fascinated and listened carefully to Stefan’s statement. After his final words, the cheer and round of applause   was overwhelming!   Below you can find the transcript of Stefan’s statement: Honorable chair, esteemed delegates, My name is Stefan Hennis and I am a youth representative on the Dutch delegation. When my delegation asked me to relate our national experience to you through this statement I felt honored. This is a unique chance, not only to highlight our best practices and challenges as a country, but also to share these with you from a youth perspective. ...

In a rather chaotic way , the CPD started off on Monday. Delegates and civil society alike had to wait for almost two hours to get their UN groundspass. Space for civil society representatives was very little. They were sent to the ‘overflow room’. However in that room, the sound didn’t match with the screen play! The negotiations had started already before the weekend, and would resume on Monday afternoon. But again a too small room was provided: even with the regulation that just one person per delegation could join, not all countries attending could fit. The Chair suspended the negotiations until Tuesday morning. With everyone geared up to get started, this was kind of a deception. Civil society participation turned out to be difficult. The rules were changed after the game had already started. The pass participants from civil society had received was only valid for two days. From Wednesday onwards, they would not be able to enter the UN building. This regulation was of cour...

It’s 9 pm, our fellow advocates just managed to get food into the UN to feed the hardworking advocates, and we are still on! As we lost one day yesterday with the suspension of the negotiations, we have to continue till late today. The delegates gathered this morning at 10 am in the General Assembly, a big enough room to house all the delegates including their NGO representatives on the delegation. Negotiations started about the 14-page text that was laid on the table after the informals last week Thursday and Friday. As it is now 9 pm, the delegates discussed eight Preambular Paragraphs, and have now reached the third Operation Paragraph. A short update, at a very general level, that does no right to all the complex dynamics in the different regions: Unfortunately, several African countries have continued to resist the negotiated outcome document with substantive content. Their idea is that the document should only be a Procedural Resolution and should not include new com...

Yesterday, 7th of April, which was the first day of the 47 th 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, gende...