This article summarizes the CSW meeting held in late February and March 2006, from the point of view of the Working Group on Girls (WGG).

The Caucuses

The WGG held four caucuses during the CSW.  The attendees overflowed the room and included NGOs representing countries worldwide, representatives from UNICEF as well as a schoolteacher who brought girls to the CSW and to our caucus meetings.

At the first caucus, the participants analyzed the draft documents and worked together to come up with suggested wording to insure that the needs of girls would be included in the final documents. We found that the draft documents (to be used as a starting point for the CSW meeting) issued by the CSW Bureau shortly before the meeting, lacked any significant mention of girls. This seemed to be a step backward. In recent years we had been pleased with the attention being paid to girls in other UN documents. (See further analysis below.)

Attendees volunteered to talk with delegates about girls’ issues, show them the suggested wording, and report back at the next WGG caucus about their interaction with the delegates. Some of the delegations they approached included the UK , US, Australia , South Africa , Spain , Indonesia , France , Switzerland , Mexico , Germany and Brazil . In addition to the importance of this lobbying effort to promote meeting the needs of girls in the documents, this was an important action both to help girls in their home country, and to inform the countries about the work of the caucus on girls.

Attendees also commented that both girls’ issues and the attendance of girls at the CSW were crucial to what would happen at the CSW in March 2007. It was agreed to make every effort to ensure more girls would attend next year when the priority theme will be “The elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child."

It also was agreed that we all need to be more engaged early on. If possible, we will try to gain access to the documents for the next CSW earlier in the process, to help us to know what we need to do at the next meeting to advance girls’ status.

Some of the other topics raised in the caucuses were: best practices should be collected; men and boys should be informed about girls’ issues so they can become partners; and girls should be trained to be active politically so that they will be a voice in their country for their own issues. NGOs should build bridges to their government to address the needs of girls, and help to provide other NGOs with the necessary information to help them do their work.

Accessibility to water and the lack of water was stressed as one of the biggest obstacles to girl’s education. Adolescent health, negative cultural influences, mentoring girls, having workshops for young people at the next CSW on confidence building were all part of the focused discussions in the WGG caucuses.

The CSW Outcome Documents

Some information on the official documents that were the main focus of work of the Commission follows.[1]

Botswana presented a document entitled "Women, the girl child and HIV/AIDS." This document spells out the problems that are relevant to the girl child and this epidemic. Botswana and the countries that worked with Botswana in drafting this document are to be congratulated.[2]

The original draft document presented at the beginning of the CSW meeting

"Equal participation of women and men in decision-making processes at all levels"contained no references to girls at all. The final outcome document contained eleven references to girls, but always paired with women, never addressing the unique situation of girls.[3]

In the document "Enhanced participation of women in development: An enabling environment for achieving gender equality and the advancement of women, taking into account, inter alia, the fields of education, health and work" some changes were added.[4]

The original draft document only mentioned girls four times. Two of those instances were in the education section where "girls and women" were mentioned, once in regard to preventing violence and harassment and once in regard to education and training in science and technology. The document also referred once to boys and girls, in reference to preventing gender bias in curricula. Girls were also mentioned once in the section on work referring to increased opportunities for women and girls to work in non-traditional sectors.

The final outcome document mentioned girls thirteen times, but always in the phrase "women and girls," never addressing the unique needs or problems of girls. Still, it was progress to have the delegates recognize that girls should be included in planning. (It is impossible to do a simple comparison of the two documents, the original draft and the final outcome document, since the original was four pages and the final is seven pages.)

This is not to imply that only counting the occurrences of the mention of girls is meaningful. In fact, the places and ways in which girls were mentioned in the final documents were important and meaningful and we were proud that we contributed to the improved outcome documents.