Monday March 21
Every morning at the 8.30 AM NGO Briefing, we hear updates on the negotiations on the Agreed Conclusions by the CSW delegations. On Monday March 21, as we started Week 2 of CSW, the third revised draft had been disseminated, and the lead facilitator of the negotiations talked about their progress and sticking points. Substantive improvements were being made, as the negotiators from the government delegations worked into the wee hours on Sunday morning. He was working to incorporate the issues brought up by the NGO community in the last week. Discussions came up as points were made by the NGO Reps in the audience, including adding girls more specifically to the text, and more details on financing mechanisms. There was agreement on the urgency of ratifying CEDAW, and a new stronger encompassing paragraph on education. The hope is for an implementation oriented outcome and agreed conclusions based on and progressing from the Member States adoption of the Global Goals, 2030 Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals all synonyms for the UN sustainable development agenda, the successor to the MDGs, adopted in September 2015.
Later on March 21, NGO representatives and activists met at the North America and European Caucus to discuss the negotiations. Since the negotiators work in closed sessions, we learn about their progress or lack of it either from NGO reps who are members of their national delegations and therefore inside, or from friends in the delegations who share information. Regional caucuses are a forum for comparing notes, sharing views, passing along information, and planning advocacy. One of the leaders of the caucus is a Canadian lawyer who gives sharp eyed insights into the use of language which allows ambiguity and provides escape clauses in agreed conclusions. Words like relevant who defines what is relevant, to whom? If word are subject to interpretation, their meaning can be modified, and the text is not precise and focused, therefore invalid as a basis for holding governments accountable. Other escape wording includes subject to national priorities, bearing in mind national or cultural contexts, and similar constructions. It is interesting once you start to look for this kind of language,how often you notice it, and realize how these linguistic loopholes, negotiating legerdemain, work.
One solution is to advocate for the inclusion of the language in conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms, with detailed reference to specific text in international agreements governments have signed on to in the past. For example, there is strong agreed language in the Beijing Platform for Action, 1995.
The objective of the Platform for Action, which is in full conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, is the empowerment of all women. The full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women is essential for the empowerment of women. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms. [9] The implementation of this Platform, including through national laws and the formulation of strategies, policies, programmes and development priorities, is the sovereign responsibility of each State, in conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the significance of and full respect for various religious and ethical values, cultural backgrounds and philosophical convictions of individuals and their communities should contribute to the full enjoyment by women of their human rights in order to achieve equality, development and peace.
One of the important roles of civil society is to remind states about the multilateral agreements they have made, and hold them accountable.