As part of a two piece series reporting on the 52nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that was recently held at the United Nations in New York from February 25 – March 7, 2008, Sarah Rosenhek from the Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) wrote this informative report.

Financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women: The 52nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), held at the United Nations headquarters in New York from 25 February to 7 March 2008.

By Sarah Rosenhek

INTRODUCTION

Today’s Friday File is part one of a two piece series reporting on the 52nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)’ that was recently held at the United Nations in New York from February 25 to March 7, 2008. [1]

This year’s priority theme was ‘Financing for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.’ The focus of this piece is to highlight how this year’s CSW session provided a unique entry point for women’s rights activists from around the world to have frank discussions about financing for gender equality and to pressure governments to turn commitments about gender equality and women’s empowerment into reality. Next week’s Friday File will be an interview with Ireen Dubel of HIVOS and we will build on the CSW’s theme of financing for gender equality by focusing on the question: How can donors can get it right?

Women’s rights defenders turned out in the highest number recorded in recent years, and their lobbying efforts led to more inclusive and relevant language in the CSW’s main outcome documents, but many women’s rights advocates were left feeling as though governments had not gone quite far enough. Though many advocates would have liked Member States to make stronger and more concrete commitments, AWID is pleased to report that women came together across regions, issues, and sectors in support of multilateralism and to push for a strengthened UN space that will deliver for all women and girls worldwide.

IT’S ABOUT TIME! WOMEN UNITE AROUND THIS YEAR’S CRITICAL THEME

Under-resourcing continues to threaten the very existence of women’s organizations and hence the priority theme of this year’s CSW was nothing short of critical. The focus on financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment was met with great enthusiasm because, since the inception of the CSW in 1946 this was the very first time that financing was declared and addressed as a priority issue. AWID staff in attendance noted women’s rights defenders responded to the theme with great determination, thoughtfulness and with an attitude of ‘it’s about time!’

The timing of this 52nd CSW is also of particular significance because the recommendations that emerged from this commission will feed into the process for two meetings to be held in the fall of 2008: the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, in Accra, Ghana and the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus in Doha, Qatar.

While government delegates (at the level of ministers, deputy-ministers and principal secretaries) and other experts (both state and non-state actors) participated in round table discussions, and expert panels on the priority theme as part of the formal programme, hundreds of NGO parallel events and activities provided much-needed opportunities for women’s organizations to share their perspectives and insights on topics including: Financing for Development (FfD), Aid Effectiveness, funding for women’s organizations, and strengthening the gender architecture of the UN.

WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY: MARKING 60 YEARS SINCE THE UDHR

During this year’s CSW, women celebrated 60 years since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This landmark document was the first to set out the basic human rights guaranteed to all people, ‘without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.’ [2]. These and other achievements were the focus at the ‘Human Rights for Women - Human Rights For All: Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)’ event hosted by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) in collaboration with AWID and a number of other organizations.

This event was organized by the CWGL in celebration of this month’s theme ‘Women’s Rights as Human Rights’ of the Every Human Has Rights Campaign [3]. Speakers at this event reflected on women’s achievements over the years, and also identified challenges with respect to our current global context, within the UN and in terms of the importance of financing the women’s movement.

We have come a long way in 60 years, with international advocacy work at the UN peaking in 1995 with the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. It was a time of optimism, momentum and power for women’s movements internationally, where women’s rights were firmly in the centre of the development agenda. Now, a little over a decade later, women’s rights movements and organizations have a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the UN as a space for advancing women’s rights.Yet women continue to participate in the CSW and other UN gatherings in large numbers, and over the past couple of years strong proposals have emerged from civil society, including proposals for restructuring the women’s machineries in the UN.

STRENGTHENING THE UN—WOMEN GEAR UP!

Civil society organizations have long felt that some of the staggering setbacks for women could be avoided by reforming the gender equality architecture or machinery of the UN. For some time now, support has been growing to build a UN that places women’s rights at the center of development processes. This sentiment has culminated in the civil society Gender Equality Architecture Reform Campaign (GEAR) that was launched at this year’s CSW. The campaign now has 266 organizational signatories from all of the world’s regions.

Support for strengthening the UN’s gender equality architecture was expressed by hundreds of women at this year’s CSW as well by numerous member states, and the UN Secretary General. In their national statement, ‘over 40 countries spoke to the need to strengthen the United Nations’ institutional mechanisms on gender equality and called for a consolidated women’s entity led by an Under Secretary General and with extensive country presence.’ [4] The GEAR Campaign is pushing for such an entity to be well-resourced and independent with normative, operational and oversight capacity. [5]

KEY SESSIONS ON FINANCING FOR GENDER EQUALITY

In the lead up to the CSW, to further understanding of the priority issue of the CSW and to assist the Commission in its deliberations, the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women convened an Expert Group on Financing for Gender Equality Meeting (EGM) in Oslo from September 5-7, 2007. [6]. AWID’s Executive Director Lydia Alpizar was the chairperson of the EGM. On the second day of the CSW, she shared highlights of Oslo’s meeting’s Report in an interactive panel, ‘Key policy initiatives on financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women.’

During this panel, Lydia shared some of the Group’s recommendations on how to translate commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment into actions, on macroeconomic policies and follow up to the Monterrey Consensus, on public finance and gender-responsive budgeting, and on bilateral and multilateral aid. Lydia also conveyed how dire the issue of resources is for women’s organizations and how the lack of financial resources is a critical hurdle for women’s rights and gender equality in the world. [7]

Accessing high quality funding was a question on the minds of many organizations. Just how well are governments and donors collaborating with CSOs? How can we do better at exploring various financing strategies? Women’s organizations at the CSW had an opportunity to explore these and other questions at the session, ‘Going Dutch: Tracing the Links between Governmental and Civil Society Funding Strategies for Financing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.’ This event was marked not only by the introduction of the new MDG3 Fund by the Netherlands, [8] but also by the audience’s active participation in the discussions and the fruitful dialogue about innovative funding models, and means of cooperation

WOMEN JOINING AND INFLUENCING THE AID EFFECTIVENESS AGENDA

CSW participants were hungry for information about how women’s organizations can join and influence the aid effectiveness process in the lead up to the OECD High Level Forum (HLF3) to be held in Accra, Ghana in September 2008. For those new to this discussion, this will be the first time the Paris Declaration – the most recent agreement by donor and recipient countries to reform the delivery and management of aid monies to strengthen their impact and effectiveness—will be evaluated. Until recently, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the big development donors were the ones in the ‘driver’s seat’ when it came to furthering the effectiveness of aid, and unlike the UN, there is no tradition of building civil society participation in these spaces.

Over the course of the past year, many CSOs have been pushing for more civil society participation, and women’s organizations have celebrated some recent successes that were shared with women’s groups in a number of parallel events during the CSW. AWID in collaboration with UNIFEM, WIDE, GENDERNET, DAWN, FEMNET, and NETRIGHT held a round table discussion offering analysis and perspectives on gender and aid effectiveness and the connections with the 52nd CSW and the Financing for Development process.

Here, speakers shared the latest results and recommendations of the International Consultation of Women’s Organizations and Networks and Aid Effectiveness, held in Ottawa, Canada from January 31st to February 1st 2008. At this landmark event, participants from different regions convened to exchange analyses and experiences about the implementation of the Paris Declaration (PD) on Aid Effectiveness and its impacts on women’s rights and gender equality. This roundtable presented a space to analyze the opportunities of gender advocates in the preparation process of the OECD HLF3 and the Road to Doha. In light of the huge demand for this session, it was repeated 5 times over, building a process of ‘aid effectiveness literacy’ sessions, led by UNIFEM [9]

ASSESSMENT OF THE AGREED CONCLUSIONS

This year women’s organizations came together and lobbied in the name of increasing financing for gender equality in a way that arguably has not happened since the adoption of the Millennium Declaration by the UN General Assembly in 2000. Specifically, women’s rights advocates introduced and supported language on a variety of topics including a) being concrete about increased funding for women’s organizations, b) support for a stronger, well-resourced UN entity as well as c) defending language to improve gender equity and sexual and reproductive health and rights. AWID was pleased to see that some of the proposed language was well integrated into the final version of the Agreed Conclusions. However, it was clear from the final version that governments could have gone farther particularly with respect to points a) and b) above.

On the positive side, advocates were pleased to see that all issues on resources and funding were core issues taken up and incorporated several demands, when the Conclusions noted,’under-resourcing in the area of gender equality in the UN system…’ and stressed ‘the need for more effective tracking of resources…spent on enhancing gender equality…’ (paragraph 19) and they specifically call for strengthening the UN system both through more effective gender mainstreaming and for ‘enhancing its capacity to effectively assist States…on gender equality and women’s empowerment…and to make adequate and reliable human and financial resources available.’ (para kk) [10]

Another important element of the Conclusions is para 21f that reads to, ‘Incorporate gender perspectives into all economic policy-making and increase participation of women in economic governance structures and processes to ensure policy coherence and adequate resources for gender equality and the empowerment of women.’

The AWID team was pleased to see that several recommendations that came from the ‘International Consultation of Women’s Organizations and Networks on Aid Effectiveness’in Ottawa were present in the Agreed Conclusion particularly with respect to language around aid and women’s empowerment, the participation of women’s organizations in policy processes at local regional, and national levels, strengthening women’s machineries within the UN, and the need for sex disaggregated data.

AWID echoes the Linkage Caucus’ support for the call for governments to integrate gender perspectives in the preparations for and outcome of the ‘Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus’, to be held in Qatar in 2008’ (paragraph 23), but while we welcome this reference to Doha, we would have liked the Commission to urge Member States to refer to other key development processes including the upcoming Third High Level Forum on the Implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, to be held in Accra, Ghana.

With respect to areas for improvement, advocates felt that while Agreed Conclusions did refer to financing agreements, the Commission could have integrated stronger language and specific commitments to financing for gender equality. In fact, it was noted by some CSW participants that the Report of the Secretary General included at least 7 or 8 concrete commitments about financing, but these were not integrated into the Agreed Conclusions.

Women’s rights advocates also called for harmonisation between CEDAW and the new agreements.

Many identified the need to relate the Aid Effectiveness agenda with other goals and processes in the Aid and Development architecture such as: the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Financing for Development (FfD) process and the Road to Doha, the Development Cooperation Forum at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the role of the International Financial Institutions in the definition of macroeconomic and development policies. Unfortunately while the Conclusions reaffirmed some previous commitments, there was a distinct feeling that increased political will was needed to deliver on governments’ international commitments on gender equality.

Overall, women’s rights advocates made a strong case for the critical need to fund women’s organizations and movements –the driving force for change on the ground. AWID has no doubt that they will continue to conduct this vital global advocacy work at upcoming international meetings.

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Endnotes

[1] The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. For an in-depth description of the Commission’s Mandate visit:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/index.html [1]

[2] ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights,’ Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948, Article 2 http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html [2]

[3] The ‘Every Human Has Rights’ Campaign is an important civil society campaign launched in December 2007 pioneered by a grou of notable activists known as The Elders, that celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and promotes the principles and values of human rights, by engaging people all over the world through partnerships. For more information about the campaign, and the month of March focus on women’s rights, see:
http://everyhumanhasrights.org/women/ [3]

[4] This quotation was taken from this year’s Linkage Caucus Statement. The Linkage Caucus is coordinated each year during the CSW by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), the NGO Committee on the Status of Women in New York, and the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO).

[5] To access the GEAR campaign’s key messages and talking points see: http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/policy/unadvocacy/gea.html [4]

To join the GEAR Campaign email: gearcampaign@gmail.com [4].

For background information on the GEAR Campaign see: http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/policy/unadvocacy/gea.html [5]

[6] The Report from the Expert Group Meeting hosted by the Government of Norway in Oslo in September 2007 may be downloaded at: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/financing_gender_equality/EGM%20Report%20Final.pdf [6]

[7] Lydia Alpizar’s presentation given at the interactive expert panel, ‘Key policy initiatives on financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women,’ is available for download at:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw52/panel-key-policy.html [7]

[8] The MDG3 Fund is a new fund set up by the Dutch government to contribute to the realization of the 3rd Millennium Development Goal ‘Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.’ For more information about the Fund see http://www.mdg3.nl/ [8]

[9] For more information and documentation on the Ottawa International Consultation of Women’s Organizations and Networks on Aid Effectiveness see: http://www.awid.org/go.php?pg=ottawa_agenda [9]

To access the series of primers on Aid Effectiveness process and why it matters for women see:
http://www.awid.org/go.php?pg=aid_effectiveness [10]

To access discussion papers put out by UNIFEM see:
http://www.unifem.org/resources/series.php?ProductSeriesID=5 [11]

[10] To access the advanced unedited Versions of CSW52 Agreed Conclusions & Resolutions see: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw52/adv_unedited_AC_resolutions.html [12]