The UN Women Summit, or Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), is the UN's second largest summit and attracts thousands of people from all parts of the world to New York during the first two weeks in March.
The UN Women Summit, or Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), is the UN's second largest summit and attracts thousands of people from all parts of the world to New York during the first two weeks in March.
Global agreements are negotiated to contribute to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.These agreements are redefined every year in a Political Declaration. Language, politics and money are key factors affecting these negotiations.
1. The importance and politics of language (and its omission)
Several countries, including the US, Argentina and Russia made attempts during the negotiations to remove words like 'gender equality' from the final agreement. This is in line with Trump's ban on government agencies using words like 'gender', 'lhbti', 'diversity' and 'evidenced-based'. To address underlying causes of gender inequality, it is important that gender and gender equality are explicitly named. This contributes to addressing and tackling, for instance, gender stereotyping. Moreover, gender inequality has an additional, disproportionate effect on gender non-conforming people. Referring only to gender or to 'male' and 'female' denies their existence and excludes them.
2. Global, growing anti-gender movement has increasing political influence
Conservative, far-right and anti-gender movements are becoming increasingly normalised. This is also evident at the 69th meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York. In Europe, the United States and Canada, governments are rolling back their commitments to gender equality and human rights. One example is the reversal of legal recognition of transgender and non-binary people and their access to healthcare in the US. In Europe and also in the Netherlands, major funding for initiatives working for gender equality is being massively cut. The announced cuts of 2.4 billion euros to development aid affects women worldwide. The political influence of the anti-gender movement can also be felt in the Lower House. For example, through the two motions passed around abortion care.
3. Marginalised groups are better described in this year's final agreement, other groups are not named at all.
Against all expectations, the agreements in the final agreement are relatively positive and more specific than in the 2020 agreement. The diversity of marginalised groups is better described than in the 2020 agreement. Groups facing specific forms of discrimination or exclusion are named, such as older women. Victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence and sexual violence in conflict are also mentioned in relation to rapid, universal access to social health services such as psychological, legal and counselling services.
4. Funding freeze feminist and lhbti+ organisations
The abrupt funding freeze by the US directly impacts policy advocacy and advocacy of many feminist and lhbti+ organisations. In the Netherlands too, the space and financial and political support for civil society is shrinking. In order to counterbalance the anti-gender movement and prevent it from gaining the upper hand, it is necessary that NGOs are (financially) stimulated and given space. Only then can NGOs continue to make major contributions to international negotiations such as the UN Women Summit.
