UN adopts declaration reaffirming women’s rights at virus-shortened session of women’s commission

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 09 (APP):Amid constraints imposed by the new coronavirus disease, member states on Monday adopted a political declaration seeking to reinforce the message that women’s rights are human rights, as the latest session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) met at UN Headquarters in New York.

The Commission’s 64 session was to last two weeks, with 12,000 delegates from around the world taking part, but it was cut to just one day because of the spread of coronavirus.

In doing so, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged member states not to send delegations to New York, and to cancel debates and other events surrounding the meeting — the UN’s second-largest each year after the General Assembly.

Monday’s Declaration pledged to step up action to fully implement the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on gender equality, agreed 25 years ago.
A UN declaration on women is approved every five years.

In his opening address, UN Secretary-General António Guterres underlined that gender inequality and discrimination against women and girls remain an “overwhelming global injustice”.

He said the vision of the Beijing Declaration has only been partly realized as progress has stalled, or even gone into reverse, in some areas.

“Centuries of discrimination, deep-rooted patriarchy and misogyny have created a yawning gender power gap in our economies, our political systems and our corporations,” Guterres said.

“Some countries have rolled back laws that protect women from violence; others are reducing civic space; still others are pursuing economic and immigration policies that indirectly discriminate against women”, the UN chief stated.

“Women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services is far from universal.
“We must push back against the pushback”.

This pushback is occurring even though change has been slow in coming for most of the world’s women and girls. As the UN General Assembly President pointed out, no country on the planet has actually achieved gender equality.

Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, the Assembly President, called for accelerated progress at all levels, particularly as countries strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Make no mistake: it is critical that we mainstream gender equality across all of our work if we are to achieve any of the SDGs,” he said. “We simply cannot exclude 50% of the population. It is everyone’s responsibility to uphold our pledge to leave no one behind”.

The Secretary-General observed that one of the legacies of the Beijing process has been movement-building, amplifying the call from diverse groups of women across the world for systemic change.

A new generation of young activists are also taking the Beijing spirit forward.

Aasha Shaik, 17, who addressed the Commission on behalf of young women in Afghanistan, said, “Afghan women, young women and girls must meaningfully participate in the peace process (with Taliban) and political decision-making at all levels in order to ensure sustainable and inclusive peace and development”. Ms. Shaik, who is a member of the UN Women Beijing+25 Youth Task Force.

“Today, most Afghan women men and youth fear peace with the Taliban may mean war on us, if we are marginalized from the peace process”, she added.