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AWID - http://www.awid.org/eng/News-Analysis/Friday-Files/CSW59-Beijing-Betrayed
CSW59 –Beijing
Betrayed
Photo: Stephan Bachenheimer/World Bank
March 20,
2015 – AWID - Two decades after the Fourth World Conference on Women, women and
girls around the world deserve better than this year’s CSW outcomes. At this
time of celebration and affirmation of Beijing and commitment to accelerated
implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, what women
don’t need is an outcome weakened by its lack of engagement with women on the
ground and lacking in vision and commitment.
By Naureen Shameem
It’s been twenty years since the Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing, a flashpoint moment for women’s rights
activists around the world. Women’s rights are human rights: this
oft-repeated phrase still holds power for many belonging to the generation
after Beijing. It represents a moment of claiming and an affirmation that
women’s rights, lived experience and human dignity are central and equal rather
than marginal.
Yet on this twentieth anniversary and
celebration of the Conference (Beijing +20), state missions came together to draft a Political Declaration weeks before nearly 9000 activists
stepped away from their daily lives to attend the 59th
Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW59). There will
be no outcome document at the end of CSW59, and women’s rights and feminist
groups have been shut out of negotiations. As a result, the final version
of the Declaration adopted last Monday is weak and general, and does not go far
enough towards the kind of transformative change necessary to truly achieve the
promises made in Beijing two decades ago on the indivisibility of human rights,
gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The Commission also
brought forward a resolution intended to review and enhance its methods of work
this year, but again, civil society voices were largely excluded from the
Working Methods process.
An Ahistorical
Declaration
It is heartening that the opening of the
Declaration highlights women’s and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of all human
rights and fundamental freedoms and the need to ensure the acceleration of the
implementation of the Platform for Action and to integrate a gender perspective
into the post-2015 development agenda. Governments also recognized the reality
that many women and girls continue to experience multiple and intersecting
forms of discrimination and vulnerability throughout their life cycle.
But, this year’s Political Declaration is
so general as to elide the clear links between the work of the CSW and many
other international human rights bodies, mechanisms and policies. On this
historic occasion, the Declaration reads as ahistorical. There are very few
references to states’ international human rights commitments and principles.
While states at least acknowledged the mutually reinforcing nature of the
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Convention on the Declaration of Elimination of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW, adopted in 1979), it only calls on states that have
not yet done so to consider ratifying CEDAW or its Optional Protocol.
There is no reference to the universality and indivisibility of all human
rights, as for instance upheld in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, nor to the public
international law principle that mandates states to exercise due diligence to
promote, protect and fulfill human rights, including by preventing human rights
abuses by private actors—such as domestic and intimate partner violence.
Lack of Civil Society
Participation Silences Women and Allows States to Renege
The weaknesses of the Declaration are
stark and unsurprising given the removal of civil society and women’s groups
from the process. Engagement of activists working on the ground, directly
connected to the needs, threats and opportunities of the moment, was critical
in securing the bold and progressive declaration of twenty years ago. This
year’s Declaration, meant to reaffirm states’ commitment to Beijing, paints a
troubling picture of our current moment.
Human rights are an underpinning principle
of gender equality, gender justice and empowerment, and invoke mutually agreed
international standards, binding legal commitments, and concrete state
responsibilities to protect and empower their citizens as equals, without
discrimination. Yet, most references to human rights have been culled from the
Political Declaration, both from those included in the original draft, as well
as language brought forward by some states during closed-door negotiations.
This removal of human rights language from the Declaration undercuts the legacy
of Beijing, which centrally affirmed the goal of realizing the human rights of
women and girls. It suggests an attempt to evade commitments made by states to
women and girls; and to narrow their range of human rights. All women and
girls, without exclusion, are entitled to all human rights—to say anything less
is to treat us as second-class citizens and to renege on international legal commitments.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the process
of this year’s negotiations, references to key civil society actors including
feminist organizations and women human rights defenders (WHRDs) were also
excluded from the final draft of the Declaration. The only way to make progress
that will honour the human rights of women is to listen to those women,
especially those that work day to day, in conditions of insecurity and
hardship, to challenge inequality. In the face of rising challenges to
political participation and freedom of expression worldwide, it’s a matter of
grave concern that these critical voices were not affirmed, especially given
the 2013 General Assembly resolution on Women’s Human Rights Defenders.
It is important to mention some of what
was removed from the Declaration text over the course of this non-inclusive
process, because of the lack of civil society voices—including those from the
Global South, who had no physical presence in New York where the negotiations
took place. Some progressive and forward-thinking language unfortunately fell
by the wayside in the rush to finalize the text, such as references to decent
work for women, grassroots and feminist groups, to an inclusive definition of
women and girls “in all their diversity,” almost all references to gender-based
violence, and specific protected grounds for discrimination including
disability and HIV status. Governments also chose not to keep in references to
women’s decision making in conflict and post-conflict situations and their
equal and effective participation in peace processes and mediations efforts. In
addition, promotion of the right to education of women and girls on the basis
of equal opportunity found its way out of the text.
In response, almost 1000 women rights
advocates and organisations signed onto a statement lambasting the UN and
Member States for their lack of political will and commitment to women’s human
rights, saying that the Declaration “represents a bland reaffirmation of existing commitments that fails to
match the level of ambition in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
and in fact threatens a major step backward.”
Missing and Watered
Down Language Does Not Bode Well for the New Development Agenda
Alarmingly, the Declaration makes no
reference at all to women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, despite
years of affirmative language at the CSW and other international human rights
processes. Government missions also watered down language on gender and the
post-2015 development agenda significantly. While the final Declaration makes mention
of the stand-alone gender equality goal, the lack of commitment to gender
equality in the sustainable development process from states around the world
sends the wrong message about the critical links between women’s human rights
and development as the post-2015 process continues. The post-2015 process must
be robust and inclusive of women.
It is also disappointing that the
Declaration agreed last Monday alludes to contemporary challenges to gender
justice and women’s human rights around the world, but misses this important
opportunity to call attention to any of these current issues. For states and
the international community to be able to tackle specific obstacles to make a
real difference in women’s and girls’ lives, they must first be recognized as a
springboard for nuanced and comprehensive commitments to act.
Unfortunately, the Political Declaration
makes no reference to climate change; the rising power and growth of State and
non-State actors around the world using anti-rights interpretations of
religion, culture and tradition to justify violence, further their political
interests and agendas, and gain access to power and resources; gender-based
violence against women and particularly that targeting WHRDs; threats posed by
non-state actors such as criminal networks and militia; and increasing economic
inequality and persistent economic crisis. Commitments and clarity on
allocations of state resources and accountability measures and mechanisms to
achieve gender equality, human rights and empowerment were also conspicuously
missing from the Declaration.
Working methods
resolution further reduces space for civil society participation
The majority of negotiations on the Working Methods resolution occurred prior
to the CSW and finalized in the second week of the Commission, again without
Ministerial involvement. It is alarming - but indicative of this trend towards
closing off spaces for participation - that member states considered it
appropriate to formulate and cement even the future mechanisms and processes of
the Commission without real input from women’s rights and feminist groups.
Women’s rights activists were again
confronted with a document featuring many of the same weaknesses as the
Political Declaration. While strong efforts by civil society advocates over the
past days led to greater inclusion of human rights language in the resolution,
no specific references to sustainable development goals made it into the final
draft. Feminist groups were again excluded, and language on civil society
engagement in the Commission was restrictive. No reference to women’s and
feminist group’s involvement in negotiations at the CSW was left in the
resolution, and there are real fears that this resolution, along with the
pre-negotiated Declaration, increase the risk that women’s rights activists
will be systematically excluded from real involvement in the outcomes of the
Commission moving forward.
Representatives of feminist and women’s organizations and organizations
working to promote the full realization of the human rights of women and girls,
expressed outrage at the this exclusion issuing a strong statement. It is crucial that women’s rights
advocates engage with the very real challenges that face us, and uphold the
human rights and fundamental freedoms of all without discrimination, with
bravery, strength and integrity. That is how to honour the legacy of Beijing
and truly respect the human rights of all.