It’s deadline year for the Millennium Development Goals and the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. What does the landscape look like for feminist activists, groups and movements in this pivotal year? Contradictory. For example, looking at the UN Commission on the Status of Women that is now underway New York and is this year tasked with reviewing progress on the Platform: on the one hand, we have an unprecedented civil society presence, with 8600 individuals from 1100 organizations registered to attend and a record 450 parallel events officially registered as part of the NGO CSW Forum. On the other, the political declaration for this year’s CSW, which is usually the final statement of the conference and represents the work of public debate over the course of two weeks, was negotiated and agreed by governments, without providing opportunity for transparent civil society engagement or input, before the CSW even began.
At the end of last week, activists mobilized quickly to voice their concern at the weakness of the declaration even as the final negotiations on the text were happening behind closed doors in readiness for it being tabled at the CSW’s opening session. A statement signed by almost 1000 women’s rights organizations calls out the lack of ambition for the scale of the issues at stake. One of the key criticisms is the declaration’s failure to recognize ‘the critical and unequivocal role women’s organizations, feminist organizations and women human rights defenders have played in pushing for gender equality, the human rights and empowerment of women and girls.’ Relatedly, the statement stresses the need for governments to commit to creating ‘an enabling environment and resources to allow women’s organizations, feminist organizations and women human rights defenders to be able to do their work free from violence.’
It is these twin gaps in policy making that if un-addressed will continue to undermine the full realization of gender equality and the human rights of all women, girls and trans* people: recognition of the role of women’s rights groups and movements in creating and sustaining social change, and recognition of their need for adequate and appropriate resources to achieve these results.
