By Rhonda Staudt (AWC Berlin)
28 October 2019, Geneva
Approximately 500 civil society stakeholders from across the UNECE region gathered to strengthen civil society cooperation and their role in UN processes on Beijing+25, and the interlinkages with the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Istanbul Convention and Agenda 2030.
The Civil Society Statement was informed by the participation of over 420 civil society members from 48 countries in the region, pulling together summaries from 26 statements, discussed in a series of break-out sessions, including Economic Empowerment, Education, Violence Against Women, and Financing for Beijing Platform for Action. The incredible consolidation of all these discussions into a statement was done by 13 young feminists. The statement was delivered in the Opening Session of the intergovernmental review meetings on October 29, 2019 by İlayda Eskitaşçıoğlu, a 26 year old lawyer and PhD student at Koç University in Turkey. İlayda works on international human rights law and is a member of the Beijing+25 Global Youth Task Force.
“You earn the right to criticize because of your engagement.” WECF Representative at Beijing+25 Regional Review Meeting for the UNECE region.
One would be remiss not to mention the enormous discourse from numerous organizations in relation to many areas like youth and older people, sexuality, gender conformity or non-conformity, sexual education, sexual identity and more.
Accountability & Monitoring: A global Independent Women’s Body
Rhonda Staudt and Pamela Perraud attended this session. Sascha Gabizon, Executive Director WECF specifically announced that participants should get in contact with this group, as this was a new and innovative idea. The session called for an urgent need to re-institutionalize gender accountability since the existing bodies are not sufficiently responsive to women’s human rights. Women and women’s NGOs all around the world do not have a truly independent global body that they can appeal to, expecting fair decisions and interventions for improvements in their lives.
The BPfA, in Paragraph 34 suggests that “…consideration should be given to establishing a mechanism for collaborating with non-governmental organizations to promote the implementation of the Platform at various levels.” CEDAW and GREVIO are such governing bodies, BUT the nominations and elections of these experts are made directly by the state parties/governments. Hence they are not truly independent. This proposed new independent body would have the capacity to receive complaints, prevent violations, protect and be the intermediary body to demand accountability and reparations from those that commit crimes against women and girls. It should have a horizontal organization model and horizontal working relations, respecting the diversity of women. This new organization would NOT have hegemonic funding.