Advocacy Workshop for Latin American and Caribbean Region Beijing+20 meeting

Women activists from Latin America and the Caribbean agreed on a regional advocacy strategy in order to ensure that the goals adopted almost 20 years ago at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing are incorporated into the Sustainable Development Goals.Members from more than 60 organizations of the national and regional civil society, representing all the diversity of women, were trained in a workshop given by the Committee of NGOs from Latin America and the Caribbean (CoNGO LAC) on the Status of Women (CSW),

 with the support of the Committee of NGO CSW New York and the cooperation of the governments of Switzerland and Norway.

The workshop “NGOs and activists of women’s human rights in UN and CSW” TOOK PLACE ON November 16th in Santiago, before the 51st Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women from Latin America and the Caribbean and the Regional meeting Special Session on Beijing+20 in Latin America and the Caribbean in which the achievements and goals of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action were analyzed. The two Co-Chairs of the CoNGO CSW LAC, Mabel Bianco from FEIM (Argentina) and Lana Finikin, from Sistren Theatre Collective and Groots Jamaica, were responsible for the workshop, which was facilitated by Eleanor Bronstom, from WEDO, Nueva York, and Marisa Viana, from Resurj. Bette Levy, from CoNGO CSW LAC and Bianco also participated as speakers.The workshop finished with the promotion of a strategy for negotiating with governments and UN agencies on how to accelerate the accomplishment of the goals in the Platform of Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and how to transfer such goals to the Sustainable Development Goals in the Post-2015 framework. Bianco closed the workshop urging “the feminist and women organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean to reinforce our activism not only to celebrate the achievements of Beijing but also to advance in the inclusion of them in the Sustainable Development Goals in the region, because women’s priorities must be clearly specified. “ The new UN WOMEN Regional Director, Luisa Carvalho, and Moni Pizani, former Regional Director, attended the workshop and contributed to the dialogue with the participants.