International Women’s Day 2022

On International Women’s Day 2022, we women still march and work for everlasting global peace, the de facto implementation of all Human Rights, including Gender Equality. For this we urgently need to muster all forces and accelerate our activities. The global COVID-19 pandemic made visible that local and global care work is the backbone of the world population. To build a better society requires consequences: gender parity at all decision making levels could be a beginning.

IAW is calling for creation of a Caring Economy and Politics centered around people’s and the planet’s needs and well-being, working for healing and focusing on caring for sustainability.

Care work needs to be respected with positive reevaluation in our awareness and increased investment in it. This will be sustainable since it enables people globally to cope with coming challenges and achieve a sustainable future on our extremely vulnerable planet by ending the careless exploitation of its resources. Women bear a disproportionate burden of the impacts of any crisis, including the climate crisis, therefore women’s participation based on an equal share of decision making and implementation as “parity” needs to be central to all solutions for a sustainable planet.

To this end we continue our call for an immediate global cease fire as war is the ultimate crises.

Wars increased “officially” from fifteen in 2019 to twenty-one in 2020, and so-called “minor” armed conflicts also increased. Now, the war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is one more. Man made disasters, wars and botched responses to pandemics are examples of the many forms of Violence against Women and Girls. Discrimination and violations of women’s human rights are extremely counterproductive to any attempt to combat climate change. To eliminate violent distractions and focus our capacities on saving the planet by finding a better balance of living, we need to end toxic masculinity. And, this must go hand in hand with addressing the lasting effects of historical disaster, wars, genocides. Many examples are provided by colonialism and both the transatlantic slave trade of previous centuries and the ongoing global trafficking in persons. Preparing for the 66. Commission on the Status of Women 14th to 25th of March with our delegation of over 30 representatives from around the globe and many more members who contribute on behalf of their national organizations, we call on the United Nations, the CSW bureau, the Commission, consisting of the UN member states delegations, to adopt the most ambitious possible outcome document on women’s rights.

We demand on this International Women’s Day: our participation at all levels of decision making, especially in meaningful measures to end Climate Change.