Progressing with our feminist goals through alternative narratives that will allow us to fight effectively against women’s human rights’ violations.

Today it is 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing took place at a moment of great global optimism when a new world order of cooperation was emerging after the end of the cold war, the dismantling of Apartheid and the emergence of new democracies.

The question to be asked is whether there has been any progress concerning gender equality and women’s human rights. The answer is yes, many advances have been reported around the world. However, the results are very unevenly spread across countries. So, progress has been variable and slow.

Many of the gains that women and girls have made are now under threat. Women are attacked for trying to enjoy their rights to education, are raped and turned into sex slaves, while they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and illiterate. Moreover, in conflict situations we continue to see atrocities that transform the bodies of women into battlegrounds for warriors.

What are the reasons for this backlash? An international environment that is not conducive to the realization of human rights, in particular women’s human rights.

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, its processes and their impact on Women’s empowerment.

Before examining the challenges in the external environment, we have to look into the United Nations system, in particular the Commission on the Status of Women, and whether it has delivered progress for women and girls.

We have to examine what has to change in the Commission on the Status of Women to make it a positive force for women’s rights.

The active participation of Non-Governmental Organizations is a critical element of the work of the Commission. Yet the Commission on the Status of Women does not institutionalize consultations with women’s Non-Governmental Organizations that possess first-hand knowledge around what women need and are critical of their state’s progress.

The state-centric process followed by the Commission on the Status of Women best represents state representatives of women and limits women’s Non- Governmental Organizations to the Non-Governmental Organization’s Forum rather than giving them voice to deliberate as equals at official proceedings.

The United Nations should devise effective mechanisms of consultation with civil society organizations before the sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women and elsewhere. Feminist organizations should hold the Commission of the Status of Women accountable for the systematic participation of women in its processes.

Fundamentally, we need a new way of thinking. We need to effect a change in our global culture whereby United Nations member states will be convinced to acknowledge the value of the input and constructive criticisms of civil society.

Global challenges to gender equality, women’s human rights and the empowerment of women.

There are a lot of global challenges we have to face in the external environment like neoliberal policies, fundamentalisms, increased numbers of refugees and displaced persons, climate change, poverty and violence, populism, the shrinking space for civil society, an emerging movement against gender ideology and many others.

The greatest challenge we have to deal with is neoliberal policies. Neoliberal capitalism is a key driver of the current global crisis. Its core positions are a free market and profits, above people and the planet. Patriarchal structures are central to its current functions.

Neoliberal capitalism in its pursuit of profit has caused ecological devastation, underdevelopment, violence and repression through deepening authoritarianism worldwide.

It has provoked a dramatic increase in income inequalities across the world and a backlash against social and political gains resulting in an increase of systematic attacks on human rights in general and women’s and vulnerable groups in particular by regressive forces that are coming to power in many parts of the world.

What can we do? Time has come to develop counter strategies from a feminist perspective.

Feminist organizations should transform neoliberal policies by using feminist economics. We have to rethink the very concept of the economy, if we want to make economic policies more gender equal. To begin with the economy should focus on well-being instead of competitiveness.

We need a new concept to bring care and unpaid care into the heart of the understanding of the economy. Care economy is one such concept, reproductive economy is another one. We should consider both as integral parts of the economy.

Feminist organizations should elaborate a gendered analysis of climate change, which is not just about collecting gender disaggregated data showing that the impact on men and women is different. Neither is the solution to simply ensure that equal numbers of men and women participate in climate change decision making. It is about including the knowledge and voices of women and men in designing effective responses to climate change. It is not just about women. It is about gender relations and how to change them.

Globalization and neoliberal policies have contributed to the growing influence and power of non-state actors such as business, financial institutions, corporations, over states and societies.

Today, corporate lobbying and interference in everyday governmental affairs is so significant, that it threatens the fundamental value of society namely, that the will of the people must be the basis for governments.

Transnational corporations exploit ideas of feminism and gender equality to improve their image in some countries, while systematically abusing women’s human rights in other parts of the world.

Women’s empowerment, once a radical feminist idea of transforming society, has been manipulated and reduced to an individualistic focus on self-esteem, entrepreneurship and consumerism.

Feminist organizations should support the elaboration, by the open-ended working group created by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 26 June 2014, of an internationally legally binding instrument to regulate within international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business in respect to human rights.

A very important aspect of our efforts to deal with global challenges has to do with power.  We have to gain and retain power by transforming power relations between women and men which are anchored in patriarchy.

We know from research findings that women’s substantive participation in peace processes increases the potential for these processes to succeed. The reasons are that women in their negotiations include broader issues than power in order to build a sustainable peaceful society. We need to systematically listen to them and learn from their leadership.

A deep concern is the rise of the concept of gender ideology. Right wing and reactionary forces fought against this concept as a social construct in Beijing. However, nowadays they are gaining ground amid the resurgence of conservatism and fundamentalism.

In recent years, the rise of right wing and nationalist populism across the world has led to an increasing number of governments implementing repressive measures against the space for civil society.

One way through which women’s and girls’ voices are silenced is through that shrinking space. Moreover, without the active input of women and girls we cannot advance and repeal the backlash against women’s human rights and make governments accountable.

Neoliberal policies have exacerbated violence, although we have seen an unprecedented level of awareness globally due to the mobilization of women survivors of different forms of violence. Violence has persisted and deepened as the structural issues related to women’s oppression have not been seriously addressed.

The same is the case with poverty. Policies elaborated by governments to reduce it have failed as they did not address structural inequalities neither the social and economic barriers that lie on the route to poverty. Women constitute half of the poor population globally.

In order to deal with the exacerbation of the above phenomena of poverty, violence, the shrinking space for civil society, climate change, power relations anchored in patriarchy, growing influence of corporations, the implementation of repressive measures by governments and the rise of the concept of gender ideology, all due to neoliberal policies, we should try to align these policies with international human rights law and promote the rights of the traditionally marginalized. Feminist organizations should report anti-rights organizations, hold them to account and build alliances with progressive policy makers/politicians.

The future we want: Our vision.

The alarming rise of all the challenges we have referred to can also be dealt with by revitalizing the conviction that multilateralism is the key to working together through global problems solving. We should also promote and lobby for a more democratic version of it in which citizens are enabled to have more agency and voice.

What is also alarming is the fact that member states continue to pay lip service to the principle of ‘leave no one behind’. So, there is lack of political will from member countries to make the Sustainable Development Goals meaningful, including Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality. There is also a general lack of political will to change development models to ones that prioritize people over profits.

2020 will be a crucial year for reaffirming, taking stock and moving forward the Beijing Platform for Action and the Sustainable Development Goals.

We should plan and propose an alternative Agenda and program of Action based on answers to a number of questions such as: How has the 1995 agenda been realized?  What remains to be done? What are the new ideas on feminist agendas in 2020? What kind of new ideas do we need for the future?

In our view we must elaborate on this alternative Agenda in which equality does not mean just women’s issues. There is a need to move beyond binaries. Our strategies to resist the backlash on human/women’s rights should take into account not only gender inequality but other inequalities as well. We have to accept the interconnected nature of inequalities.

Intersectionality recognizes that people can experience multiple oppressions which intersect in powerful ways.

How do we make sure that this new alternative Agenda is inclusive and addresses and challenges global issues as they impact the rights and position of women in different countries?

The answer to that will depend on whether an alternative narrative of our feminist goals can be built on the basis of our Agenda that will allow us to bring regressive forces to a halt. For that we need allies to support us.  Alliances with other like-minded organizations are likely to be especially necessary in difficult times. Mobilizing to have an impact, we must make advances firmly grounded in institutional frameworks and norms.

The post IAW Statement CSW 64 appeared first on International Alliance of Women.

• In a context of economic uncertainties, exclusionary politics, rising conflict and instability, shrinking democratic spaces and push back on women’s rights CSW held its 63^rd session at the UN headquarters in New York. This is the UN’s largest gathering on gender equality and women’s rights. The priority theme of the session was social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The review theme was women’s empowerment and the link to sustainable development. This year CSW63 focused on issues at the heart of what matters in the daily lives of women and girls. Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, Chair of the Bureau for the 63^rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women, Permanent Representative of Ireland to the UN said that in focusing on core challenges such as affordable childcare, healthcare, education, maternity protection, pensions and safe transport the CSW can have a transformative impact on the realities faced by women and girls around the world.
• Representing a steady increase in participation from last year, more than 9000 representatives from over 1030 civil society organisations registered to attend this year’s session. As the single largest forum on gender equality and women’s rights for UN Member States, civil society organisations and other international actors, this years CSW saw a record number of attendances. Participants included more than 5,000 representatives from civil society organisations around the world, nearly 2,000 Member State delegates and 86 ministers.
• Along with the 17 official meetings that include Ministerial roundtables, high- level interactive events and expert panels, over 280 side events hosted by Member States and UN Agencies, and 400 parallel events hosted by civil society organisations took place.

• The outcome of the two-week meeting, known as the Agreed Conclusions, adopted by Member States, puts forth concrete measures to strengthen the voice, agency and leadership of women and girls as beneficiaries and users of social protection systems, public services and sustainable infrastructure.

Key recommendations from the Agreed Conclusions include the following:

• Invest in social protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure to support the productivity of women’s work, including in the informal economy;
• Ensure that progress in women’s access to social protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure is not undermined by budget cuts and austerity measures, and levels of protection previously achieved are not reversed;
• Build on multilateral commitments to gender equality, including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the ILO Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202), to strengthen access to social protection, public services and infrastructure for all women and girls;
• Recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care and domestic work by ensuring access to social protection for unpaid caregivers of all ages, including coverage for health care and pensions;
• Scale up investment in quality public care services that are affordable and gender-responsive;
• Identify and remove barriers to women’s and girls’ access to public services, such as physical distance, lack of information and decision-making power, stigma and discrimination;
• Guarantee the availability of safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation, including for menstrual hygiene, in homes, schools, refugee camps and other public places;
• Ensure that transport policies and planning are sustainable, accessible, affordable, safe and gender-responsive, taking into account the different needs of women and men, and adapted to be used by persons with disabilities and older persons;
• Promote the full and equal participation and leadership of women and women’s organizations in policy dialogues and decision-making relating to social protection systems, public services and sustainable infrastructure;
• Strongly condemn the impunity and lack of accountability rooted in historical and structural inequality that accompanies pervasive violence against women.
• During the negotiations on the text of the conclusions the US continued as it has done in the last two years to undermine common international goals like those around reproductive rights, healthcare, climate change, family planning. A contentious issue was language on family. The word ‘families’ was pushed to become ‘family’ to emphasise the traditional unit of man and woman as a family component excluding same sex families as a unit.

In its efforts to restrict women’s rights the US aligned with countries such a s Poland, Hungary, Russia, some Gulf countries, Malaysia. They tried to remove from the preamble the word ‘reaffirms’ the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and replaced it with ‘take note of’.

The US adopted regressive views on transgender people.

Joining the US on certain issues was also the Holy See, a UN observer state in demanding, but failing, to remove language in the final document around sexual health contending that the language promoted sexual activity among girls as well as abortion.

Debates of whether the word ‘dignity’ should follow the word ‘empower’ which according to some reinforced women’s dignity raised conflict. The US group sought to prevent the word “gender’ being used as a substitute for ‘women’ and girls’ and tried to restrict wording around migration, technology and climate change.

• The US is moving away from traditional democratic allies on social and cultural matters. Instead it is increasingly allying itself with Persian Gulf countries, Iraq, Malaysia and some conservative African countries on a range of issues including questions surrounding protection for LGBT individuals and women’s health issues. So at the 63^rd session of CSW this year in New York the US turned back the clock on women’s rights

• The US Mission to the UN has been without an official ambassador this year. This year’s representatives to CSW were led by an ambassador from the US mission to the UN, Cherith Norman Chalet but most of the people on the delegation were not professional diplomats. The US delegation to the CSW included representatives from two conservative NGO’s, C-FAM a Roman Catholic entity and The Heritage Foundation an openly anti- UN group.

• The US delegation and others aligned with it deployed disruption as a tool throughout the conference to push their agenda of undermining women’s rights, most significantly the right to abortion. The US delegation was more aggressive and outspoken this year.

• Moreover, at side events and panels, nongovernmental organizations against abortion and other topics hijacked discussions, filled up meeting rooms to delay proceedings and hired a bus to circulate around the UN area, featuring a photo of a foetus on its sides.

• Protecting women’s rights against this astounding alliance were long time supporters of multi-lateral democracy like Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the Caribbean – Latin American region. Africa also remained a regional supporter of the rights of women. China waited until the document was approved to disengage itself from language around human rights in particular the rights of women human rights defenders.

• The problem of visa denials continued this year. 980 signatures against the denial of visas were collected during CSW63 including IAW’s signature, and a petition was delivered to Cherith Norman Chalet, US It called for the US to honour its obligation to admit foreign nationals, including NGO representatives, to the U.S. in order to participate at UN meetings. This is set forth in the UN Headquarters Agreement signed on 26 June 26 1947 by Secretary of State George Marshall and UN Secretary General Trygve Lie. Section 11 of the Headquarters Agreement prohibits the U.S. from imposing any restrictions on NGOs’ travel to or attendance at the UN. Requirements or conditions needed to be met in order for an NGO applicant’s visa to be approved to attend UN sessions are not set forth in the Agreement.

• The petition is asking that the US state department creates a uniform policy at all Embassies and Consulates in order to streamline and standardise procedures and handling of these visas.

• After the agreed conclusions were accepted different countries made statements. The US joined the positions of others on sovereignty, the family, anti SRHR and health services because they are taken to mean abortion. They spoke encouragingly on the inclusion of indigenous and disabled women and girls. There have been difficulties from the USA, Russia and some Arab and African states over SRHR, migration which was difficult for everyone; the problem of national sovereignty and national laws was also difficult. The phrase ‘all women throughout their life course’ was not accepted anywhere and older women were not mentioned at all. Widows, after a big struggle was included only in the context of families.

• At the closing ceremony Bahrain and Saudi- Arabia made statements saying that they could not join the consensus but when objections were asked for by the chair they said nothing and so the chair considered the document as accepted. Bahrain and Saudi- Arabia then put forward the view that they were not joining the consensus and so the agreed conclusions could not go through because everybody was not in agreement. The advice given then and later was that no objections had been raised and due process has been followed so a major push to upset the whole situation failed.

• Other states also raised objections in post agreed conclusions statements but no one withdrew their support overall. A number made reservations about family, sexual and reproductive health and rights and said the later was attempting to promote abortion.

• The vice chair of the conference representing Africa Ambassador Koki Muli Grignon from Kenya, who also facilitated the negotiations, publicly declared she had been cyber bullied through a blog directed at her and her work and received almost 1,000 bullying text messages on her phone, also criticizing her role at the CSW.

• The attacks on Ambassador Kuki along with other bullying reported by diplomats were condemned by a range of delegates from across continents.

• Despite the rancour in this year’s negotiations the newly agreed conclusions enhance the equal rights of women and girls in such matters as social protection systems, public services and access to sustainable infrastructure.

• In closing remarks United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka observed that:

• This year was very special because of the number of young women and young people who participated. They made their presence felt with contributions of high quality. I want to thank the delegations who made it possible for many of those young people to be here. This investment will have a high rate of return, I promise you.
• With the Agreed Conclusions you have given us the possibility to take the work forward, to make sure that we address the discrimination that may be suffered by women and girls in every part of the world.
• The Agreed Conclusions, even though not everybody gets everything they wanted, give us enough to take home, to work and to take further the work of improving the quality of life for women and girls.

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