A blog by Pat Black

“The flowers are out in Central Park and New York continues its daily round, buzzing and frenetic. At the UN all is relatively quiet and ordered again, the thousands of women who have been there for two weeks for the Commission on the Status of Women Sixty-third session 11 – 22 March 2019 have gone home.

So what did it all achieve?

Is the world going to be a better place for women and girls? The Chair of CSW63, H.E. Geraldine Byrne Nason, the Irish ambassador thinks so, but at what cost?

The Agreed Conclusions were Agreed but only after long nights of difficult negotiations, acrimonious exchanges, and much compromise all round.

The facilitator Vice Chair, Koki Muli Grignon from Kenya, suffered verbal abused in carrying out her work; in tears as she presented the Agreed Conclusions, she explained how she had been subjected to exactly the kind of cyber bullying and harassment which participants had been examining and protesting about; trying to protect all women and girls in this electronic age.

Delegates expressed publicly their support for her, especially the NGO participants who had remained to the bitter end, with many delegation leaders thanking her warmly and decrying that this should ever happen at the UN.  But it did happen, boundaries were broken.

The Agreed Conclusions almost didn’t make the final hurdle, with the Ambassador from Saudi Arabia withdrawing her country from the consensus, condemning the negotiators for not being prepared to accept her country’s point of view and proposed wording for the text.  She said that there had been a refusal to accept the role of the family and too much included on Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights.

After the Agreed Conclusions had been ‘gavelled’, the official hammer being brought down to signify acceptance and Member States had started to make their statements, Saudi Arabia supported by Bahrain objected to the continuation of the committee with the Agreed Conclusions standing.  They tried several times to overturn the decision but were over ruled, the Chair indicating that proper procedures had been followed.  The web recording of this session is very illuminating – Visit HERE for UN WebTV.

Soroptimist International ‘asks’ included access to free, quality education, equal access to employment opportunities, safe access to water and sanitation, nationally appropriate social protection systems, recognition of the role of civil society, and the collection of disaggregated data.

All of these made it into the text, although in some cases perhaps not with language as strong as we would have liked.

SI delegates were consulted regularly and frequently during the negotiations, mainly by the UK and EU negotiators, and SI was also able to work quietly behind the scenes with other Member State negotiators, NGOs and UN Women.

There was a very strong attempt to push back on previously agreed language, reducing or removing women’s human rights which have been gained in the past.  It was therefore extremely important that the NGOs and members of civil society were there even throughout the night to encourage negotiators wishing to defend those previous agreements.

A significant contribution by SI in the dying throes of the negotiations, was to assist with research on the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants when many delegations would not accept inclusion of wording from the latest Global Compact on Migration.  The New York Declaration was seen as acceptable and is in the Agreed Conclusions.

Other text causing dissension was the continued push for ‘national sovereignty’ in the text, ‘Family unit’ v ‘families’, the use of the word ‘gender’ rather than ‘men and women’, and sexual and reproductive health rights.

In their concluding statements, several other countries including the United States, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Russia expressed their dissatisfaction and reserved the right not to implement where the agreement contravened their national laws.

A huge difference this year was the attempt to regress, not just through the representation of delegations such as the USA.  There was, however, encouragement given by Member States for the attendance of civil society organisations and faith groups, supporting their attendance during the second week.  There are many groups whose views would seek to take away the improvements which have been made to the lives of many women and girls.

In the past there have been very few NGOs present for the second week of CSW, working to support the negotiations. Soroptimist International is one NGO consistently contributing, thanks to the involvement of the SI UN Representatives. I was given every encouragement and mentored by Bette Levy, SI UN Representative when I first attended, and I am grateful that I have been able to continue to work with an increasing number of Soroptimists who are also interested in the work on the text.

Now we need everyone to find out what is happening in their own country, to look at the Agreed Conclusions in relation to the work taking place on the Sustainable Development Goals, and to monitor and hold every country to account for women’s human rights.

Next year, CSW64 will be celebrating the achievements made since the meeting of the World Conference of Women in 1995, which produced the Declaration known as the Beijing Platform for Action.

Why are we still fighting for progress on gender equality 25 years on?

Dealing with official statements and the wording of UN resolutions and agreements is not an area which is of interest to everyone, but it is important that we continue to make our SI voice heard at this level – after all we are a Global Voice for Women”.

 

Further Information

UN Women CSW63: http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw63-2019

Agreed Conclusions: http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/outcomes

Secretary General Town Hall Meeting: http://webtv.un.org/…/transforming-the-world-…/4930324186001/watch/un-secretary-general-townhall-meeting-with-civil-society-csw63-side-event/6013177908001/?term=&sort=date?lanarabic&page=7

 

Closing Plenary of CSW63: http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/watch/14th-plenary-meeting-commission-on-the-status-of-women-csw63-2019-action-on-draft-proposals-action-on-draft-agreed-conclusions-action-on-any-other-outstanding-issues/6017175833001/?term=

 

Article from Guardian on USA position during negotiations: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/mar/18/us-accused-of-trying-to-dilute-international-agreements-un-commission-status-of-women

 

Lead Image: UN Women Flickr/UN Women/Ryan Brown