WUNRN
http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw59-2015
CSW59/Beijing+20 (2015)
The fifty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women will
take place at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 9 to 20 March 2015.
Representatives of Member States ,
UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions of the
world attend the session.
Themes
The main focus of the session will be on the Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action, including current challenges
that affect its implementation and the achievement of gender equality and the
empowerment of women. The Commission will undertake a review of progress made
in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 20
years after its adoption at the Fourth World
Conference on Women in 1995. The review (Beijing+20) will also include the outcomes
of the 23rd special
session of the General Assembly, the first five-year assessment
conducted after the adoption of the Platform for Action, which highlighted
further actions and initiatives.
The session will also address opportunities for achieving
gender equality and the empowerment of women in the post-2015 development
agenda.
Preparations
The regional commissions of the United Nations will
undertake regional reviews. Both the national and regional review processes
will feed into the global review.
>> National-level
review of implementation
>> Regional 20-year
review processes
Organization of the session
The Commission's two-week session will include the
following activities:
- Organization of work [to be
determined]
Official Documents
The documentation for the session is expected to become
available in late January 2015.
- See more at: http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw59-2015#sthash.xg63tzRT.dpuf
http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/brief-history
Brief History of CSW
The Commission on
the Status of Women (CSW) first met at Lake Success, New York, in
February 1947, soon after the founding of the United Nations. All 15 government
representatives were women. From its inception, the Commission was supported by
a unit of the United Nations that later became the Division for the Advancement
of Women (DAW) in the UN Secretariat. The CSW forged a close relationship with
non-governmental organizations, with those in consultative status with the UN
Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) invited to participate as observers.
From 1947 to 1962, the Commission focused on setting
standards and formulating international conventions to change discriminatory
legislation and foster global awareness of women’s issues. In contributing to
the drafting of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the CSW successfully argued against
references to “men” as a synonym for humanity, and succeeded in introducing
new, more inclusive language.
Since the codification of the legal rights of women
needed to be supported by data and analysis, the Commission embarked on a
global assessment of the status of women. Extensive research produced a
detailed, country-by-country picture of their political and legal standing,
which over time became a basis for drafting human rights instruments.
The Commission drafted the early international
conventions on women’s rights, such as the 1953 Convention on
the Political Rights of Women, which was the first international law
instrument to recognize and protect the political rights of women; and the
first international agreements on women’s rights in marriage, namely the 1957 Convention on
the Nationality of Married Women, and the 1962 Convention on
Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages.
The Commission also contributed to the work of UN offices, such as the
International Labour Organization’s 1951 Convention
concerning Equal Remuneration for Men and Women Workers for Work of Equal Value,
which enshrined the principle of equal pay for equal work.
In 1963, efforts to consolidate standards on women’s
rights led the UN General Assembly to request the Commission to draft a
Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which the
Assembly ultimately adopted in 1967. The legally binding Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), also drafted by the
Commission, followed in 1979. In 1999, the Optional
Protocol to the Convention introduced the right of petition for
women victims of discrimination.
As evidence began to accumulate in the 1960s that women
were disproportionately affected by poverty, the work of the Commission centred
on women’s needs in community and rural development, agricultural work, family
planning, and scientific and technological advances. The Commission encouraged
the UN system to expand its technical assistance to further the advancement of
women, especially in developing countries.
In 1972, to mark its 25th anniversary, the Commission
recommended that 1975 be designated International Women’s Year—an idea endorsed
by the General Assembly to draw attention to women’s equality with men and to
their contributions to development and peace. The year was marked by holding
the First World
Conference on Women in Mexico City, followed by the 1976–1985
UN Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace. Additional world
conferences took place in Copenhagen
in 1980 and Nairobi
in 1985. New UN offices dedicated to women were established, in
particular the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the International
Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW).
In 1987, as part of follow-up to the Third World
Conference on Women in Nairobi, the Commission took the lead in coordinating
and promoting the UN system’s work on economic and social issues for women’s
empowerment. Its efforts shifted to promoting women’s issues as cross-cutting
and part of the mainstream, rather than as separate concerns. In the same
period, the Commission helped bring violence against women to the forefront of
international debates for the first time. These efforts resulted in the Declaration on
the Elimination of Violence against Women adopted by the General
Assembly on 20 December 1993. In 1994, a UN Special Rapporteur on violence
against women, its causes and consequences was appointed by the Commission on
Human Rights, with a mandate to investigate and report on all aspects of
violence against women.
The Commission served as the preparatory body for the
1995 Fourth World
Conference on Women , which adopted the Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action. After the conference, the
Commission was mandated by the General Assembly to play a central role in
monitoring implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
and advising ECOSOC accordingly. As called for in the Platform for Action, an
additional UN office for the promotion of gender equality was established: the
Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women
(OSAGI).
In 2011, the four parts of the UN system mentioned on
this page—DAW, INSTRAW, OSAGI and UNIFEM—merged to become UN Women, now the
Secretariat of the Commission on the Status of Women.
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