The 25 years since the visionary Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action for Women have seen dramatic changes globally. While there has been important progress on some fronts, new challenges have emerged, including the current COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the concerns outlined 25 years ago remain deafeningly relevant for women’s and girl’s rights.
In a somber but riveting session, our audience learned about how challenging our future is in relation to the water crisis. H.E Mr. Volkan Bozkir, the President of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, began by relating how we were a long way from reaching our goals even before the COVID 19 pandemic.
New York SI UN Representatives, Siren Fadler and Maria Fornella-Oehninger, report on the CSW65 Virtual Side Event, "Digital Gender Gaps and Opportunities", organised by Germany and the Council of Europe.
On the last day of the first week of CSW65, members of Soroptimist International (SI) and others from civil society met with the facilitator of the CSW negotiations, Armenia’s Ambassador Mher Margaryan and Lopa Banerjee, Director of UN Women’s Civil Society Division, during a Civil Society Briefing.
New York SI UN Representatives, Siren Fadler and Maria Fornella-Oehninger, report on the CSW65 Virtual Side Event, "Digital Gender Gaps and Opportunities", organised by Germany and the Council of Europe.
While the COVID-19 pandemic had revolutionised the way we communicated and in many ways offered us a variety of tools to socialise, work or attend school online. Social media, video-conferencing apps, voice calls and text chats had also increased the amount of online harassment, intimidation and abuse which was directed at women.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres candidly speaks of gender inequality as "a shadow pandemic” during the Virtual Townhall Meeting with Women's Civil Society.
This year because CSW is virtual, everyone who wanted to attend the Opening Session were able to do so. It probably didn’t feel quite as grand as it would have done to be there in person but I appreciated being able to listen to some giants of the UN system.
While we may be living through a gender crisis at this time, we are being presented with the opportunity for gender equality advocates from every sector of society – governments, civil society, private sector, entrepreneurs, trade unions, artists, academia and social influencers – to drive urgent action and accountability in order to build back better, achieve the goal of gender equality and meet the goals of the 2030 Agenda.
