The 59th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women gets under way in New York on Monday and will run from March 9-20, bringing together diplomats, NGOs and high-profile figures such as former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
The year 2015 marks 20 years since the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted in the Chinese capital at the Fourth World Conference on Women. Once considered the world’s most comprehensive framework for advancing women’s rights, the 1995 Beijing agreement was signed by 189 governments.
Attending its signing as then US first lady, Hillary Clinton delivered a keynote speech in which she famously said: “Let it be that human rights are women’s rights – and women’s rights are human rights – once and for all.”
But 20 years on, the UN says the deal’s commitments have been only partially fulfilled.
As the 59th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) gets under way in New York on Monday, organisers say their focus will be to review the progress made so far in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration.
“From the political to the economic spheres, progress has been made, but not enough,” said UN Women, the UN agency responsible for gender equality, in a statement ahead of the session.
If all of Beijing’s signatory countries had lived up to their pledges we would be seeing a lot more progress than the “modest gains” we are currently celebrating, said the agency’s executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-NgcukaIf.
“We would be talking about equality for women across the board – and we might be talking about a saner, more evenly prosperous, more sustainably peaceful world,” she wrote, days before the UN session opened.
Some 50 percent of women are in paid employment worldwide, an increase from 40 percent more than 20 years ago, according to UN Women figures. But wage disparities remain persistent. At current rates of progress it will take more than 80 years for women to achieve equality in this sphere and more than 75 years to achieve equal pay, the agency notes. And even today, only one in five parliamentarians is a woman.
At the same time, violence against women and girls remains a global pandemic, affecting one in three women worldwide. The number of victims remains shockingly high despite such violence being widely recognised not only as a gross human rights violation but as a barrier to national progress and global development.
But Mlambo-NgcukaIf said there have been significant improvements in the two decades since Beijing.
“[A]longside the stories of extraordinary atrocity and everyday violence lies another reality, one where more girls are in school and more are earning qualifications than ever before; where maternal mortality is at an all-time low; where more women are in leadership positions, and where women are increasingly standing up, speaking out and demanding action,” she said.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day on Sunday, UN Women launched a new global campaign entitled Step It Up, which asks governments to increase the pace of reform to achieve gender equality by 2030.
More than 1,100 NGOs and 8,600 representatives have registered for the 59th CSW session in New York, setting a new record for participation. Some 200 side events – hosted by member governments and UN agencies – have been planned alongside the commission’s official meetings, with another 450 events hosted by civic agencies.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will inaugurate the summit and present the UN’s global review of progress on gender equality at the opening session.
France’s UN mission will host a debate on “Sex Education and the Way Forward for Equality and Empowerment” on opening day while the World Health Organization will sponsor a concurrent discussion on “Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women” (11:30am local time).
On Tuesday the secretary general will be joined by former US secretary of state Clinton, UN Special Envoy on climate change Mary Robinson and Mlambo-Ngcuka for an event focused on women’s empowerment entitled Unlimited Potential: Business Partners for Gender Equality.
Click below to view a schedule of events planned for the 59th session.
