CSW 58 AGREED CONCLUSIONS - REALITIES OF DEBATES, GOOD NEWS &
CHALLENGES - MISSED OPPORTUNITIES - AWID
March 28, 2014 - This year’s negotiations at the CSW were hotly contested, as
usual, and very important because of the new development framework that is being
put forward to replace the MDGs when they expire in 2015. As such, women’s
rights advocates, organisations and movements worked extremely hard to retain
existing language and tried to push forward language so that the Agreed
Conclusions contained clear commitments for gender equality and women’s human
rights.
The document importantly recognises that “almost 15 years after the MDGs were
launched, no country has achieved equality for women and girls, and significant
levels of inequality between women and men persist” also highlighting that
several critical issues were not adequately included in the MDGs, including
violence against women and girls; child, early and forced marriage; women’s and
girls’ disproportionate share of unpaid work, particularly unpaid care work;
women’s access to decent work, the gender wage gap, employment in the informal
sector, low paid and gender-stereotyped work such as domestic and care work;
women’s equal access to, control and ownership of assets and productive
resources including land, energy and fuel, and women’s inheritance rights;
women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights.
However, the geopolitics and conservative backlash that we spoke of in our
recent FF, were palpable in the last days of negotiations last week, which
resulted in a set of Agreed Conclusions that have largely been welcomed by
women’s rights advocates, organisations and movements.
The good
Some of the important achievements in the ACs includes explicit reference to
the need to learn lessons from the MDGs in shaping the post-2015 development,
calling on States to “tackle critical remaining challenges through a
transformative and comprehensive approach and calls for gender equality, the
empowerment of women and human rights of women and girls to be reflected as a
stand-alone goal and to be integrated through targets and indicators into
all goals of any new development framework.”
There is strong language on violence against women and girls (VAWG), including
explicit reference to eliminating all harmful customary practices, including –
female genital mutilation (FGM), child, early and forced marriage, through
enacting and enforcing laws. There are also important references to natural
disasters and climate change, although no reference to common but differentiated
responsibility; and the role of the media in elimination of gender stereotypes
was included.
The document importantly recognises role of feminists, women’s and
community-based organizations in placing the interests, needs and visions of
women on national, regional and international agendas.
Women’s rights advocates fought hard to ensure that restrictive language on
families, which does not recognise diverse forms of families was not included in
the final text, along with reference to sovereignty which can be seen as a ‘get
out jail free card’ for States to renege on their responsibilities.
Despite a lot of resistance from conservative opposition, there is some
language on sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights (SRHR),
including access to abortion services where they are legal and some language on
comprehensive sexual education (CSE).
The bad and ugly
But as has become the norm at CSW, there were tense negotiations on some of
the more contested issues, with a small minority of conservative governments,
including the Holy See, that hampered negotiations by objecting to concepts as
fundamental as gender and the human rights of women. In the final days of
negotiations the Holy See, which only holds special observer status at the UN,
went as far as to question the legitimacy of the CSW process and the final
outcome document.
The AC’s fail to recognise the landmark Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (VDPA) of the World
Conference on Human Rights that took place in Vienna 20 years ago; and there was
lack of recognition, throughout the two week negotiations, of the indivisibility
of human rights. Specific language related to the violence and discrimination
that people face because of their real of perceived sexual orientation and
gender identity (SOGI) was excluded despite the principles of human rights,
which embody non-discrimination as a core principle for human rights to be
guaranteed.
The Commission also failed to make the link to between sustainable
development -a multidimensional concept that has ecological, economic and social
dimensions – and respect for sexual and reproductive rights and diverse
sexualities and gender identities. The exclusion of reference to specific
marginalised groups in the text also means that the rights of sex workers have
been excluded.
Missed opportunities
While the Commission recognised the world financial and economic crises, it
did not go far enough in highlighting the particular negative impacts they have
had on development, nor the need for regulation and to hold those responsible
accountable. It also missed the opportunity to recognise the need for a
structural changes to the current economic model and to make link between
economics and development. Strong language regarding increasing the
effectiveness of financial resources across all sectors to achieve gender
equality was watered down, calling for voluntary innovative financing mechanisms
as appropriate rather than aligned with existing human rights
obligations. Reference the accountability of state and non-state actors for
the promotion of gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment was
also excluded from the final ACs, as was language to ensure access to remedies,
reparation and redress.
At least year’s CSW women’s rights advocates worked hard for new language on
women human rights defenders (WHRDs) to be included in the ACs. While this
year’s Commission acknowledges the public and legitimate role of WHRDS in
promoting and protecting human rights, democracy, rule of the law and
development, the Commission missed the opportunity to include language related
to ending impunity harassment, criminalization and aggression that WHRDs
experience both because of who they are and the work they do.
