INTRODUCTION
Today's Friday File is part one of a two piece series reporting on the 52nd
Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)' that was recently
held at the United Nations in New York from February 25 to March 7, 2008.
[1] This year's priority theme was 'Financing for
Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.' The focus of this piece is
to highlight how this year's CSW session provided a unique entry point for
women's rights activists from around the world to have frank discussions
about financing for gender equality and to
pressure governments to turn commitments about gender equality and women's
empowerment into reality. Next week's Friday File will be an interview with
Ireen Dubel of HIVOS and we will build on the CSW's theme of financing for
gender equality by focusing on the question: How can donors can get it
right?
Women's rights defenders turned out in the highest number recorded in
recent years, and their lobbying efforts led to more inclusive and relevant
language in the CSW's main outcome documents, but many women's rights
advocates were left feeling as though governments had not gone quite far
enough. Though many advocates would have liked Member States to make
stronger and more concrete commitments, AWID is pleased to report that
women came together across regions, issues, and sectors in support of
multilateralism and to push for a strengthened UN space that will deliver
for all women and girls worldwide.
IT'S ABOUT TIME! WOMEN UNITE AROUND THIS YEAR'S CRITICAL THEME
Under-resourcing continues to threaten the very existence of women's
organizations and hence the priority theme of this year's CSW was nothing
short of critical. The focus on financing for gender equality and women's
empowerment was met with great enthusiasm because, since the inception of
the CSW in 1946 this was the very first time that financing was declared
and
addressed as a priority issue. AWID staff in attendance noted women's
rights defenders responded to the theme with great determination,
thoughtfulness and with an attitude of 'it's about time!'
The timing of this 52nd CSW is also of particular significance because the
recommendations that emerged from this commission will feed into the
process for two meetings to be held in the fall of 2008: the Third High
Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, in Accra, Ghana and the Follow-up
International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the
Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus in Doha, Qatar.
While government delegates (at the level of ministers, deputy-ministers and
principal secretaries) and other experts (both state and non-state actors)
participated in round table discussions, and expert panels on the priority
theme as part of the formal programme, hundreds of NGO parallel events and
activities provided much-needed opportunities for women's organizations to
share their perspectives and insights on topics including: Financing for
Development (FfD), Aid Effectiveness, funding for women's organizations,
and
strengthening the gender architecture of the UN.
WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY: MARKING 60 YEARS SINCE THE UDHR
During this year's CSW, women celebrated 60 years since the United Nations
adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This landmark
document was the first to set out the basic human rights guaranteed to all
people, 'without distinction of any kind, such
as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion,
national or social origin, property, birth or other status.' [2]. These and
other achievements were the focus at the 'Human Rights for Women - Human
Rights For All: Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)' event hosted by the Center for Women's
Global Leadership (CWGL) in collaboration with AWID and a number of other
organizations.
This event was organized by the CWGL in celebration of this month's theme
'Women's Rights as Human Rights' of the Every Human Has Rights Campaign
[3]. Speakers at this event reflected on women's achievements over the
years, and also identified challenges with respect to our current global
context, within the UN and in terms of the importance of financing the
women's movement.
We have come a long way in 60 years, with international advocacy work at
the UN peaking in 1995 with the Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing. It was a time of optimism, momentum and power for women's
movements internationally, where women's rights were firmly
in the centre of the development agenda. Now, a little over a decade later,
women's rights movements and organizations have a critical analysis of the
strengths and weaknesses of the UN as a space for advancing women's
rights.Yet women continue to participate in the CSW and other UN gatherings
in large numbers, and over the past couple of years strong proposals have
emerged from civil society, including proposals for restructuring the
women's machineries in the UN.
STRENGTHENING THE UN—WOMEN GEAR UP!
Civil society organizations have long felt that some of the staggering
setbacks for women could be avoided by reforming the gender equality
architecture or machinery of the UN. For some time now, support has been
growing to build a UN that places women's rights at the center of
development processes. This sentiment has culminated in the civil society
Gender Equality Architecture Reform Campaign (GEAR) that was launched at
this year's CSW. The campaign now has 266 organizational signatories from
all of the world's regions.
Support for strengthening the UN's gender equality architecture was
expressed by hundreds of women at this year's CSW as well by numerous
member states, and the UN Secretary General. In their national statement,
'over 40 countries spoke to the need to strengthen the United Nations'
institutional mechanisms on gender equality and called for a consolidated
women's entity led by an Under Secretary General and with extensive country
presence.' [4] The GEAR Campaign is pushing for such an entity to be
well-resourced and independent with normative, operational and oversight
capacity. [5]
KEY SESSIONS ON FINANCING FOR GENDER EQUALITY
In the lead up to the CSW, to further understanding of the priority issue
of the CSW and to assist the Commission in its deliberations, the United
Nations Division for the Advancement of Women convened an Expert Group on
Financing for Gender Equality Meeting (EGM) in Oslo from September 5-7,
2007. [6]. AWID's Executive Director Lydia Alpizar was the chairperson of
the EGM. On the second day of the CSW, she shared highlights of Oslo's
meeting's Report in an interactive panel, 'Key policy initiatives on
financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women.'
During this panel, Lydia shared some of the Group's recommendations on how
to translate commitments to gender equality and women's empowerment into
actions, on macroeconomic policies and follow up to the Monterrey
Consensus, on public finance and gender-responsive budgeting, and on
bilateral and multilateral aid. Lydia also conveyed how dire the issue of
resources is for women's organizations and how the lack of financial
resources is a critical hurdle for women's rights and gender equality in
the world. [7]
Accessing high quality funding was a question on the minds of many
organizations. Just how well are governments and donors collaborating with
CSOs? How can we do better at exploring various financing strategies?
Women's organizations at the CSW had an opportunity to explore these and
other questions at the session, 'Going Dutch: Tracing the Links between
Governmental and Civil Society Funding Strategies for Financing Gender
Equality and Women's Empowerment.' This event was marked not only by the
introduction of the new MDG3 Fund by the Netherlands, [8] but also by the
audience's active participation in the discussions and the fruitful
dialogue about innovative funding models, and means of cooperation
WOMEN JOINING AND INFLUENCING THE AID EFFECTIVENESS AGENDA
CSW participants were hungry for information about how women's
organizations can join and influence the aid effectiveness process in the
lead up to the OECD High Level Forum (HLF3) to be held in Accra, Ghana in
September 2008. For those new to this discussion, this will be the first
time the Paris Declaration – the most recent agreement by donor and
recipient countries to reform the delivery and management of aid monies to
strengthen their impact and effectiveness—will be evaluated. Until
recently, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the big
development donors were the ones in the 'driver's seat' when it came to
furthering the effectiveness of aid, and unlike the UN, there is no
tradition of building civil society participation in these spaces.
Over the course of the past year, many CSOs have been pushing for more
civil society participation, and women's organizations have celebrated some
recent successes that were shared with women's groups in a number of
parallel events during the CSW. AWID in collaboration with UNIFEM, WIDE,
GENDERNET, DAWN, FEMNET, and NETRIGHT held a round table discussion
offering analysis and perspectives on gender and aid effectiveness and the
connections with the 52nd CSW and the Financing for Development process.
Here, speakers shared the latest results and recommendations of the
International Consultation of Women's Organizations and Networks and Aid
Effectiveness, held in Ottawa, Canada from January 31st to February 1st
2008. At this landmark event, participants from different regions convened
to exchange analyses and experiences about the
implementation of the Paris Declaration (PD) on Aid Effectiveness and its
impacts on women's rights and gender equality. This roundtable presented a
space to analyze the opportunities of gender advocates in the preparation
process of the OECD HLF3 and the Road to Doha. In light of the huge demand
for this session, it was repeated 5 times over, building a process of 'aid
effectiveness literacy' sessions, led by UNIFEM.[9]
ASSESSMENT OF THE AGREED CONCLUSIONS
This year women's organizations came together and lobbied in the name of
increasing financing for gender equality in a way that arguably has not
happened since the adoption of the Millennium Declaration by the UN General
Assembly in 2000. Specifically, women's rights
advocates introduced and supported language on a variety of topics
including a) being concrete about increased funding for women's
organizations, b) support for a stronger, well-resourced UN entity as well
as c) defending language to improve gender equity and sexual and
reproductive health and rights. AWID was pleased to see that some of the
proposed language was well integrated into the final version of the Agreed
Conclusions. However, it was clear from the final version that governments
could have gone farther particularly with respect to points a) and b)
above.
On the positive side, advocates were pleased to see that all issues on
resources and funding were core issues taken up and incorporated several
demands, when the Conclusions noted,'under-resourcing in the area of gender
equality in the UN system...' and stressed
'the need for more effective tracking of resources...spent on enhancing
gender equality...' (paragraph 19) and they specifically call for
strengthening the UN system both through more
effective gender mainstreaming and for 'enhancing its capacity to
effectively assist States...on gender equality and women's
empowerment...and to make adequate and reliable human and financial
resources available.' (para kk) [10]
Another important element of the Conclusions is para 21f that reads to,
'Incorporate gender perspectives into all economic policy-making and
increase participation of women in economic governance structures and
processes to ensure policy coherence and adequate resources for gender
equality and the empowerment of women.'
The AWID team was pleased to see that several recommendations that came
from the 'International Consultation of Women's Organizations and Networks
on Aid Effectiveness'in Ottawa were present in the Agreed Conclusion
particularly with respect to language around
aid and women's empowerment, the participation of women's organizations in
policy processes at local regional, and national levels, strengthening
women's machineries within the UN, and the need for sex disaggregated data.
AWID echoes the Linkage Caucus' support for the call for governments to
'integrate gender perspectives in the preparations for and outcome of the
'Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review
the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus', to be held in Qatar in
2008' (paragraph 23), but while we welcome this reference to Doha, we would
have liked the Commission to urge Member States to refer to other key
development processes including the upcoming Third High Level Forum on the
Implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, to be held in
Accra, Ghana.
With respect to areas for improvement, advocates felt that while Agreed
Conclusions did refer to financing agreements, the Commission could have
integrated stronger language and specific commitments to financing for
gender equality. In fact, it was noted by some CSW
participants that the Report of the Secretary General included at least 7
or 8 concrete commitments about financing, but these were not integrated
into the Agreed Conclusions.
Women's rights advocates also called for harmonisation between CEDAW and
the new agreements.
Many identified the need to relate the Aid Effectiveness agenda with other
goals and processes in the Aid and Development architecture such as: the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Financing for Development (FfD)
process and the Road to Doha, the Development Cooperation Forum at the
United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade
Organization (WTO), and the role of the International Financial
Institutions in the definition of macroeconomic and development policies.
Unfortunately while the Conclusions reaffirmed some previous commitments,
there was a distinct feeling that increased political will was needed to
deliver on governments' international commitments on gender equality.
Overall, women's rights advocates made a strong case for the critical need
to fund women's organizations and movements –the driving force for change
on the ground. AWID has no doubt that they will continue to conduct this
vital global advocacy work at upcoming international meetings.
______
Endnotes
[1] The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is a functional commission
of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), dedicated
exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. For an in-depth
description of the Commission's Mandate visit:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/index.html#about
[2] 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights,' Adopted and proclaimed by
General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948, Article 2
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
[3] The 'Every Human Has Rights' Campaign is an important civil society
campaign launched in December 2007 pioneered by a grou of notable activists
known as The Elders, that celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and promotes the
principles and values of human rights, by engaging people all over the
world through partnerships. For more information about the campaign, and
the month of March focus on women's rights, see
http://everyhumanhasrights.org/women/
[4] This quotation was taken from this year's Linkage Caucus Statement. The
Linkage Caucus is coordinated each year during the CSW by the Center for
Women's Global Leadership (CWGL), the NGO Committee on the Status of Women
in New York, and the Women's Environment and Development Organization
(WEDO).
[5] To access the GEAR campaign's key messages and talking points see
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/policy/unadvocacy/gea.html and to
join the GEAR Campaign email gearcampaign@gmail.com. For background
information on the GEAR Campaign see:
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/policy/unadvocacy/Gender%20Equality%20Architecture%
20and%20UN%20Reforms%20July%202006.pdf
[6] The Report from the Expert Group Meeting hosted by the Government of
Norway in Oslo in September 2007 may be downloaded at:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/financing_gender_equality/EGM%20Report%20Final.pdf
[7] Lydia Alpizar's presentation given at the interactive expert panel,
'Key policy
initiatives on financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women,'
is available for
download at:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw52/panel-key-policy.html
[8] The MDG3 Fund is a new fund set up by the Dutch government to
contribute to the realization of the 3rd Millennium Development Goal
'Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.' For more information about
the Fund see http://www.mdg3.nl/
[9] For more information and documentation on the Ottawa International
Consultation of Women's Organizations and Networks on Aid Effectiveness
see http://www.awid.org/go.php?pg=ottawa_agenda . To access the series of
primers on Aid Effectiveness process and why it matters for women see
http://www.awid.org/go.php?pg=aid_effectiveness . To access discussion
papers put out by UNIFEM see
http://www.unifem.org/resources/series.php?ProductSeriesID=5
[10] To access the advanced unedited Versions of CSW52 Agreed Conclusions &
Resolutions see
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw52/adv_unedited_AC_resolutions.html
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