The 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the main United Nations body dedicated to women’s rights and gender equality, began in New York on March 9th, and will last until March 19th. This year the Commission’s priority theme is ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, who on a global level have just 64 per cent of the legal rights of men.
As every year, international civil society has been working in synergy, monitoring the whole process, and ensuring the accountability of governments and of the multilateral system through the Women’s Rights Caucus (WRC), a global coalition of more than 200 organizations, networks, and feminist movements supporting gender equality. Together with the WRC and Countdown 2030 Europe, the European consortium Aidos is a member of, we have been following closely the CSW works, for promoting crucial issues, such as bodily autonomy, and the inclusion, in the Agreed Conclusions’ text, of an explicit reference to the International Conference on People and Development (ICPD) and to its Programme of Action, as well as to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). Efforts have also been made for keeping references in the text to multiple and intersecting forms of discriminations and for ensuring strong support to civil society, with a special focus on women’s organizations and women rights defenders.
Tha Agreed Conclusions have been adopted on March 9th and, for the first time in the CSW history, the adoption was not by consensus, but by vote. Though the majority of Member States voted in favor of the text, six of them abstained, among which Italy, and the United States were the only ones to vote against.
The final text does include the explicit recognition of intersecting discriminations as a factor structurally marginalizing many women and girls. Not only, a strong language on preventing and contrasting sexual and gender-based violence has been secured, together with the commitment to ensure sustainable resources to holistic survivors-centred services, including for sexual and reproductive health. Nonetheless, the document has some serious gaps and omissions, among which the absence of “reproductive violence” as a crucial concept related to justice access as well as of “conflict related sexual violence”, a huge phenomenon disproportionately affecting women and girls. During negotiations, a significant resistance toward gender-related language was observed, with some Member States questioning the inclusion of terminology already agreed upon in the past, among which the wording “sexual and reproductive health and rights” as well as terms and concepts related to bodiliy autonomy, which were not invluded in the final text.
In an historical moment of growing backlash to women’s rights, respecting past commitments and promoting the full realization of SRHR is crucial for ensuring access to justice for all women and girls. To reaffirm these responsibilities within the multilateral framework is now more crucial than ever, as we are facing an era of polycrises, shrinking civic space and growing cuts to international cooperations fundings.
Read the UN Women press release
Read the statement of Countdown 2030 Europe
Read the Agreed Conclusions