WUNRN
AS THE 59TH UN COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN (CSW) CLOSES, A
VETERAN WOMEN’S
RIGHTS ACTIVIST ASSESSES WHERE WE ARE NOW ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS
IN 2015?
By Margaret Owen – Founder/Director, Widows for Peace through Democracy
http://www.widowsforpeace.org/about/meet-the-team/
The theme of the 59th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)
“Review of Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action”(www.unwomen.org/csww59)
attracted to New York, this year, the largest number of NGOs, 1,100, ever seen
at this annual international conference, bringing with them 8,600 women from
across the world.
In the last two weeks some 440 NGO Parallel Events have taken place,
although, alas, well outside the UN building, thus distanced from the official
ministerial delegations who speak a different language and do not hear the real
voices of the most vulnerable women and girls at the grass-roots; those
bringing up emerging issues as well as existing ones that have not been
addressed by governments.
In the NGO meetings and workshops the realities of the lives of women and
girls have been described, graphically, poignantly and often horrifically,
especially in the context of sexual violence, trafficking, forced prostitution,
early child marriage and harmful traditional practices. From these
discussions, the NGO representatives made many innovative recommendations for
action by Member States and UN entities. But who is listening? What
weight do these proposals carry? Across 1st Avenue, it is as if another planet,
Ministers and official delegations speak another language.
As the session closes, I wonder whether any progress has been made in our
long and difficult journey to ensure gender equality and the empowerment of
women. Maybe we have not gone backward, but have simply stood still, when we
needed so urgently to accelerate change given the vast numbers of women and
girls who continue to suffer discrimination and abuse as well as new types of
violence and torture especially sexual violence in the context of conflict and
extremism; now harshly exemplified by the barbarism inflicted every day on
women and girls in Syria and Iraq by IS (Islamic State).
Will Member States be galvanized into more effective actions to demonstrate
their commitment and political will to bring about the changes, legal, social,
economic, and educational that are so desperately needed in a world where armed
conflicts, sectarian violence, the rise of fundamentalism, natural disasters,
HIV and AIDS, and harmful traditional practices are, in so many countries,
making the lives of women and girls worse, not better?
Passing new laws criminalising violence and discrimination to women so as
to be seen to comply with the BPFA and the CEDAW (UN Convention on Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) is simply window-dressing. It is
not enough, if there are no time-frames or bench-marks for implementation, if
women have no access to the justice system, if there is no political will to
use all available methods to bring equality and empowerment to women and girls
and to change patriarchal social attitudes that are such barriers to
change.
As a women’s human rights lawyer and feminist activist, with a focus on
widowhood, I have participated in nearly every session of the Commission on the
Status of Women (CSW) since 1997. Following the Beijing Fourth World Conference
of Women(un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing), the CSW has annually reviewed each of
12 action areas of the BPFA (Beijing Platform for Action) that emerged from
that historic international meeting.
Each and every article has relevance to widowhood, though widows are never
mentioned in this historic document.
We have been coming to New York year after year to remedy the scandalous
neglect of an issue that affects millions of women, now and in the
future; neglecting to address the human rights deprivations of
widowhood will have irrevocable social and economic consequences for the whole
of society, as widowhood in many countries is a root cause of increasing
poverty and inequality across the generations. But we have failed to rouse the
Member States to look at this issue principally because the working methods of
the CSW are so hostile to NGO contributions.
Negotiations on the CSW Working Methods are still continuing until this
Friday, but again, there have been limited opportunities for NGO involvement
even in this process. We would like to see many changes, including NGO
consultations on, for example, selecting the next emerging issue. The UK NGOs
had proposed "widowhood" to the UK government, but that suggestion
had no wheels. Also, of course, for more opportunities for NGOs to interact
with the official delegations, and provide them with the information and
evidence they need to improve their policy making. But like the Political
Declaration (PD) negotiations, we are just not there.
Naively, in those early days, I and many other NGO representatives were
exhilarated and hopeful about the CSW process and saw it as an effective means
for us to influence Member States to develop the appropriate policies to
implement the action plan. We believed then that NGOs and grass-roots women’s
associations’ contributions to the deliberations at the CSW were valued by Member
States, the Bureau and the UN. We come away from this 59th CSW in
despair. Governments are not listening to us, nor is the UN.
Sadly, across the intervening years progress on securing implementation of
the Beijing commitments on women’s and girls’ human rights has been erratic.
There have been highs and lows. This year’s session has been one of the most
disappointing for the NGOs and grass roots women. Instead of having draft
Agreed Conclusions to work on in preparation for this CSW, we have been dumped
with this “Political Declaration”(PD) (www.unwomen.org/en/csw59-2015) bland and unambitious,
negotiated even before the opening of the Session, with the NGOs mostly
excluded from deliberations in its composition, unless their own governments
decided to invite them in. More on this later in the article.
The good times were in the old days when we could co-host meetings with
UNIFEM or UNDAW within the UN Building; make an oral statement to all the
Member States; have government officials attend our events; sit in at High
Level Panels; observe and make interventions at the plenary debates. Highs also
because earlier Agreed Conclusions did contain what we once saw as real
advancements in governments’ commitment to act to promote gender equality, the
empowerment of women, and the elimination of gender based violence.
Agreed Conclusions while having no legal binding force, do provide leverage to
hold governments to their commitments.
The lows have accumulated in the last four years when our access into the
UN was limited, not just by the scaffolding and building work but by a change in
attitudes to our presence. Since 2010 NGOs have been left basically talking to
each other in the ghettos of the Church Centre, or even further away, a 9 block
trek to the Armenian Centre, or the Salvation Army where of course, Government
delegates can never find the time to go so far from their base.
Furthermore, regrettably, the last four years have seen the emergence of
several Member States attempting to roll back on the language of the BPFA,
arguing that their sovereignty, religion and culture predominates over the
rights of women, and opposing language on such issues as sexual and
reproductive health rights, abortion, intimate partner violence and LBGT
rights.
At the 56th CSW in 2012(www.unwomen.org/en/csw/outcomes) for
example, where the priority theme was on rural women, progress stagnated.
Governments were divided and it was impossible to get consensus, so there were
no Agreed Conclusions.
At the 57th CSW in 2013(www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/57sess)
focusing on violence against women, the Agreed Conclusions were only a
mitigated success and civil society groups expressed “deep concern” over
attempts by some conservative member states and groups to derail the CSW
process and undermine previous agreements, in the BPFA and in the Declaration
of the 1994 Cairo Population Conference. Countries that fought hard
– and continue to fight – to roll back the language on women’s rights are led
by Iran, Russia, Syria and the Vatican. In spite of WPD's intense efforts to
get a reference to widowhood violence into the text - winning this addition in
our work with our own UK government, and thence into the ECE draft -the final
Agreement had eliminated such a mention.
I have been attending CSWs for all these years, along with my partner
organisations in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, to promote awareness
of the low status of uncounted millions widows of all ages, particularly in
developing countries and those afflicted by conflict and fundamentalism.
Widows were never referenced in the 1995 Platform, therefore this 59th
CSW reviewing the BPFA we saw as the best opportunity to ensure that the review
would at last remedy this omission.
It is unlikely that the recommendations made at our Parallel Event held on
March 13th “Why should we care about Widows?” (www.widowsforpeace.org) which including the need to have
widowhood issues addressed in the post 2015 SDG agenda and for UN WOMEN to open
a special desk on Widowhood will get any attention from Member States. For us
the CSW working method is a dead alley. We see the CEDAW (UN Committee on
Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women) as a far more
effective mechanism to hold governments to account on gender issues.
As I write this article on the penultimate day of the 59th Session,
we are pleased we were selected as one of 26 NGOs to make an oral statement on
the need for the post 2015 development goals to contain, in its targets and
indicators, a reference to the poverty and human rights violations experienced
by widows. At least we had this precious 3 minutes to give voice to one of the
most neglected gender and human rights issues, but which Member States will
respond and consider our recommendations for action?
THE POLITICAL DECLARATION (PD)
So fearful has the CSW Bureau been of having yet more division and long
negotiations over any draft Agreed Conclusions, they decided on a short
Political Declaration that would avoid such difficulties.
The PD, announced at the opening day of the Session has ignited a storm of
protest from almost all the NGO regional caucuses.
This 59th Session, anticipated with such enthusiasm by the NGO
community will now go down in history as the one where NGOs felt most excluded.
The EWL (European Women’s Lobby) has issued a Statement, as has the Africa
Caucus, that the PD was prepared without any consultation with the NGOs,
and with wording bland and disappointing. They censure UN Member
States for their failure to address the expectations of women’s NGOs and the
reality of the lives of women and girls across the world. They describe the PD
as lacking ambition and showing no serious and forward-looking commitment to
women’s rights. The PD, they said, “falls short in reaffirming key language for
women’s human rights” The UK NGO CSW ALLIANCE has also contributed
to this protest. Pat Black, of Soroptomists International, says “We are
disappointed that the PD fails to echo the strength of the BPFA and
Declaration. Listening to the young women here at the CSW I am not sure they
will be prepared to wait for another 20 years to see Government Commitments to
women and girls fulfilled".
Scandalously, the PD, developed NGO consultation, gives no recognition to
the instrumental role women’s NGOs have played in the realisation of women’s
rights across the world. It is weak on violence to women, on sexual and
reproductive rights, and is silent on extremism, fundamentalism, and conflict
that have impacted so horrifically on women and girls. The method of its
preparation represents, according to the NGOs here in New York, a total
contradiction of the principles of democracy, transparency and accountability.
I fear that this 59th Session, which draws to a close this
Friday, the 19th March, will not be seen historically as a victory
for women’s rights.
On the contrary, just when the forces of extremism, fundamentalism,
militarism, and patriarchy are eroding women’s rights in so many regions,
when women are bearing the brunt of austerity cuts, when millions of women and
children are victims of violence, of armed conflict, of violence,
including sexual violence within and without the home, when early child
marriage, trafficking and prostitution, ruins millions of lives, when it
is NGOs who can bring the voices of the most marginalised women to
international attention through the CSW, we have been silenced here.
Charlotte Bunch, the passionate US feminist activist and founder of the
Centre for Women’s Global Leadership says “The Beijing +20 UN process at the
CSW needs to remember that it is civil society that puts fire into women’s
rights and empowerment and unless there is more recognition and collaboration
with feminist activists and women’s groups, globally and locally the hopes for
implementation of the BPFA are dim”
I am sad. This is surely my last CSW. I have lost faith in it as a
means of advancing the status of women. The week started so well with the NGO
Consultation and the great march to Times Square on International Women’s
Day. The wonderful Gertrude Mongella, who had chaired the Beijing
Conference, saying “ Its not the women who must change. It’s the
world” and Lakshmi Puri, the Deputy Director of UN WOMEN
calling out “ We want change now, We will not wait. Laws are not
enough. We need implementation”. A splendid young Afghan-American, Mohammad
Naheem spoke passionately and eloquently on the roles of men and boys in
eliminating GBV and promoting women's equality. And a young 17 year old
proclaimed her dream for all the girls of the world.
We go home knowing we have a long hard struggle ahead for we cannot wait
for 2030, for 2050, or the next 70 years for our rights.. We do want them
NOW!