This is inevitably a brief post as it is past 11pm, although I won’t try to sleep until after the noisest dishwasher in the world has finished its work.
Have definitely decided that less is more in UN CSW56. You can spend your entire day rushing from one side event to the other and miss the entire point of the whole event – namely influencing member states to shape the agreed conclusions in a way that furthers the cause of women across the world. There is great concern that this year will be a repeat of last year, where the agreed conclusions were not adopted as they represented a reduction not an enhancement of women’s rights. Those of you familar with the Beijing Declaration and Platform for action from 1995 will know that it provides a base line of basic rights for women. Apparaently last year’s conclusions were rejected by EU and others as it set a precident and eroded agreed rights. The omens do not look good for this year either (apparently). Only the next 10 days will tell if this is the same again.
Have managed to get into two UN side events – the second of which was a joint meeting from four UN bodies: Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Food Programme, Interantional Fund for Agricultural Development and UN Women. These four UN entities have decided to work together to on womens issues to ensure that they make a positive difference for more women in the world and work together in relation to other UN entities.
The focus will be around:
Economic participation
Education and training
Democratic representation and participation
Health
Aid effectiveness
Human rights
Post conflict resolution
HIV/Aids
THis seems very sensible – good collaboration, information sharing and support, particularly as UNWomen is cronically underfunded. Many member states promised significant sums when it was set up in 2011, to support a comprehensive work programme. The UK alone has only contributed 25% of what it promised to UN Women.
Am becoming increasingly frustrated by the statement at the beginning of every meeting – we want to hear from you: ‘You, the delegates and participants know what it is like for rural women so we want to hear your views and stories’. They then talk at us for 75 – 90 minutes or longer and strangely enough there is no time left for further contributions. What a missed opportunity for the UN.
And lost and found twice: my small handbag containing money, cards, passport and flat keys, found exactly where I had left it in a meeting room – praise God for the lovely people sitting behind who had kept an eye on it. And the strangest of all – the charger and adaptor for this notebook, left in a UN conference room yestrday. Being an Anglican I sat in the same place the second time in the room today, spotted it after 10 minutes and then realised I’d lost and found it again. Had better wake up a bit, on the law of threes, the next thing lost may be more difficult to find.
Tomorrow will promise to write about the side event on Monday on religion and women and tell you a bit about North American ‘sharing’. And the first round of discussions on the agreed conclusions. Oh yes and the joys of non-hierarchical decision making!
Jill Hopkinson 