Preceding the official Regional Review of Beijing+20 meeting for the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), a civil society forum was held which adopted a Declaration and Recommendations. (They are attached but can also be found at beijing20.ngocsw-geneva.ch) The recommendations include both sexual and reproductive health and rights and comprehensive sexuality education
The official sessions, held on 6 and 7 November, focussed on closing the gender gap through social and economic policies, women in policy, women and justice, women and violence, and the closing session on ways forward. On the first day Nyardazayi Gumbonzvanda, the chair of the CSO Forum Beijing+20, presented the results of the forum during the opening session. Other speakers included the Crown Princess of Denmark. (Videos of the session can be found on the twitter account of UNECE and #Beijing20ECE.) During the meeting there was harldy any possibilities for interventions from the floor, but when it was possible, no CSOs asked for the floor.
There was strong support for sexual and reproductive health and rights with only Malta speaking against and it was included in the Chair's summary. References were also made to the women and security resolution and the Istanbul Convention, with calls for its ratification, as well as for the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by the two countries in the region that have not yet done so.
There was support for a strong stand-alone gender goal in the Post2015 agenda, and for ensuring funds for gender equality and women's rights through the Means of Implementation of Post 2015.
In the last session an intervention was made by Sascha Gabizon, on behalf of the Women’s Major Group. (See below)
The co-chairs presented a fairly strong Chair's Summary which will be posted shortly.
Intervention by Sascha Gabizon, WECF International in the closing panel at the UNECE review Beijing+20, Geneva, 7th November 2014
Thank you chair, it is an honour to speak in this session on the way forward, and I would like to thank the chairs and the UNECE for this important session on the Beijing+20 review.
It is of course pity we will not have a large World Women Conference next year because of the fear to see a role back on women’s rights language — it would have been very good to mobilize and engage young women and men from around the world – but this week in Geneva was getting very close to that, we had a strong spirit of Beijing here in the Palais!
We have heard these days many excellent examples of how governments and civil society are taking action to try and implement the Beijing Platform for Action.
Amongst the most important advances are the many legal steps taking in countries for gender equality, and also international commitments such as the Istanbul Convention.
But we have seen too little progress in all areas of the Beijing of Platform For Action, and in some areas roll back.
The reasons for this we have heard are many, a.o. gender stereotypes are persistent, and lack of women’s economic independence, worsened by the financial crisis in all this region.
The UN Women Report has shown that not one country in the world has achieved gender equality, and that at this pace we will need another 81 years! That is inacceptable of course.
Looking at the way forward: This region should send a strong message to the world: That we absolutely want to ensure women’s human rights fully!! That it is a shame for our societies if we are not able to achieve this. And that we therefore will make this a key priority in all our policy areas; building on the 12 areas of the Beijing Platform for Action.
The outcome of this meeting should recommend as next steps:
The budget allocation is the most critical, which is why this meeting should really come with a strong message on how gender equality and women’s rights have to be a priority for the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goal agenda, and the 3rd Conference on Financing for Development, which will be negotiated in 2015 and together will set the priorities for the Means of Implementation for spending on development in the coming 15 years.
We should have criteria that no funding for Post2015 should be given, unless it has shown that it will help promote gender equality and women’s rights.
The outcome of this meeting should say that the allocation of development budgets should ensure full implementation of gender equality and women’s human rights, not only pick out one point here or there.
We cannot have the same as we had for the MDGs, where the targets for women’s health and gender equality were too limited and not sufficient human rights based.
This meeting should support the stand alone gender goal for Post2015 as has been presented in the SDGs, and in particular the gender goal’s strong targets on ending discrimination, ending violence with specific reference to Female Genital Mutilation, and ending child and forced marriage, and on women’s full and equal participation in decision making, The meeting should also support ensuring gender targets throughout the other goals.
We should also send a message that there are some targets in the SDG Gender goal which have qualifiers which are in contradiction to human rights, qualifiers which say “in accordance with national circumstances”, and that these are not acceptable.
We should welcome the new target that addresses unpaid care and domestic work, but send a message that we it should NOT have a reference to national appropriate, and that is should refer to a redistribution of unpaid work between women and men, and households and the state.
Then, for the UNECE region, we should bring back a target which we lost in the negotiations on the SDGs, namely to fully involve men and boys in achieving gender equality and breaking down gender stereotypes, and make sure they understand the benefits this has for men.
Also, we should call for the target on ensuring sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights to be strengthened. We should add sexual rights, to ensure that women have their full right to control over their bodies, to decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.
Civil Society will not be able to support the outcome of this meeting if SRHR is not there.
And, this meeting should call for the inclusion of Comprehensive Sexuality Education, which is entirely missing in the SDGs. All the evidence and statistics show that countries which have comprehensive sexuality education have much less teenage pregnancies and a later age of first sexual relationship – which contradicts the opponents of CSE who would like us to believe that sexual education will only lead to promiscuity. But they are proven wrong by the facts.
The same goes for our right to safe and legal abortion. The statistics show that countries which have de-criminalized abortion, has much LESS abortion then countries which have criminalized it. Making abortion legal and safe, and ensure comprehensive sexuality education, is the best way of reducing abortions.
Finally, I want to end with specific needs of women in the Eastern European and Central Asian counties.
The mobilization this week has shown us that Beijing is alive and kicking, and lets make best use of all the opportunities provided by next years combined processes of the Beijing+20 anniversary and the final negotiations on Post2015 sustainable development goals, to speed up and ensure that gender equality and human rights will be fully achieved within the coming 5 to 15 years, and not a year longer!