I was in session today starting at 8:30 am – my first day was spent attending sessions for over 12 hours and writing until 11pm and I haven’t even finished posting about yesterday’s sessions, let alone todays! There has been so much to learn and I am so incredibly grateful to be here.
I wanted to share with you a video post I found on UN Women.org of the opening session. It is so energizing – but I have repeatedly heard today at the Parallel sessions that we are women who gather, tell stories, cry together and then go home. The real need is for action when we get home … I am encouraged to return to a community awareness event about Human Trafficking!
This year’s awards for the NGO CSW Women of Disticntion Awards went to two incredible women (http://www.ngocsw.org/wod/2013-recipients).
Bineta Diop, Founder and President of Femmes Africa Solidarité, spoke of the gruesome witness to murder of women during war and conflict. She recalled seeing the dead women, with their babies still slung on their backs, lying dead after a week. Her speech was filled with passion and compassion for the women brutalized by war and conflict.
Bineta Diop (Senegal), one of the most recognised organizations involved in engendering peace processes in Africa. She has led numerous peacebuilding programmes in the Great Lakes region (Burundi, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo), Mano River region (Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) and the Horn of Africa (Somalia and Sudan). Ms. Diop’s track record includes a women, peace and security initiative that resulted in the creation of a strong West African women’s movement, the Mano River Women’s Peace Network, which was awarded the United Nations General Assembly Prize in Human Rights in 2003. Ms. Diop also mobilised a network of African women’s organizations that played an instrumental role in achieving gender parity within the African Union Commission in 2003, which culminated in the election of five female Commissioners. She has demonstrated vision and leadership, and is recognised as a champion on women’s human rights and gender issues, not only in Africa but at the global level. Ms Diop is currently serving in the Global Civil Society Advisory Group of UN Women and as a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Ms. Diop has received numerous honours and awards and in 2011 was named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2012, the United Nations-mandated University for Peace awarded her a “Doctor Honoris Causa in International Peace Studies” and the French government awarded her the prestigious “Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur”.
Tawakkel Karman was unable to join the Forum. The officials in Yeman did not issue her a Visa to travel. I mention this in particular because there was an outcry throughout the sessions on Monday – where are the lawyers to advocate and prevent governments from this type of oppression and limitation of women of distinction to have the freedom to travel to share their message of peace and hope.
Tawakkol Karman (Yemen) is the Yemeni political activist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with two other female activists in 2011, becoming the youngest person ever to win the Prize. During the “Arab Spring” of 2010 and 2011, as activists were fighting entrenched rulers in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, Karman began leading Yemeni protests against the rule of President Saleh, earning the nickname “Mother of the Revolution.” She is also one of the founders of Women Journalists Without Chains, which works to provide a voice for women’s rights and freedom of expression in Yemen.
Opening remarks for the NGO CSW Forum 2013 were provided by Soon-Young Yoon, Chair of the NGO CSW/NY. She welcomed Michelle Bachelet, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women to address the forum. This was her 3rd year participating on behalf of UN Women. Her key speaking points were:
Oct 11 was declared by the UN as “girl child day” – the inaugural theme in 2012 was to end child marriage (www.un.org/en/events/girlchild/)
1 Billion Rising campaign brought together people around the world for a single cause using social media (www.onebillionrising.org)
We cannot have peace, prosperity or progress without the full participation from women; violence against women & girls undermines these efforts
7 of 10 women have reported experiencing violence or sexual abuse and the unreported cases are higher; many countries still don’t have laws against domestic violence
engage and educate men and boys to change cultural norms and expectations
Inclusiveness and quality is gender, socio-economic, and regional – violence against women it is the greatest challenge of this century; the discussion and implementation is not a procedural formality and citizens are not beneficiaries but partners;
On Sunday, the SI delegation within our hotel gathered at 8am to line up at the Armenian Diocese Convention Center. It’s a huge building with a gold-metallic dome on the corner of 2nd Ave and 35th Street. We were bombarded with handfuls of flyers, buttons for the 5th World Conference on Women and even a book (Moving Toward the Millionth Circle: Energizing the Global Women’s Movement by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.). The weight was overwhelming and a surprise to me.
The NGO Forum hosted 700 women and men for a full day conference, starting at 9am and ending at 5:30 with a song – Keep on Movin’ Forward – sung a capella by our very own Dawn Marie Lemonds, who did a spectacular job. While I don’t have photos uploaded yet (the one thing I forgot was the camera cable), I will update this post when I return.
I heard that there are over 6,000 people registered for the 57th Commission on the Status of Women – the largest yet. In a time of economic hardship and turmoil one must believe that the topic of Violence Against Women is truly that widely held a belief and the movement to irradiate it is that strong.
The day opened with a public service announcement video for G!RL Be Heard: from Victim to Victory and a live performance that was incredibly moving. Find out more at girlbeheard.org
In the spirit of easy to search content, I’d like to take this opportunity to post the various panels and speakers individually in the next series of posts. It will be aligned with the format for the rest of this week. Instead, I will speak to the post-forum evening – the whole SI delegation met for dinner, along with members from SI Manhatten who came to greet us. We were presented with UN 2013 calendars and a listing of key publications, as well as an SI lobby package with flyers, pamphlets and CDs of the 2011 Global Impact Report. We got an update of key messages and actions taken in advance. We also rejoiced in the celebration of Catherine Myers, who was recognized for her lifetime achievement of advocacy work and unofficial welcoming committee for delegates to the UN in NY.
I had the pleasure of meeting Hanna G from Australia, who has been interning at Capital Hill, Margaret C from SI Middlesbrough in England (who took a keen interest in our auction and I in her Rotary Night @ the pub with music and a bottle auction), Any Aryany, National Representative for the one club in Indonesia (located in Jakarta – they hold all their meetings in English and are exploring the idea of multi-lingual meetings in an effort to charter another club in the country), and Christine Peer from Austria who I had previously met at the Montreal SI Convention in 2011.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the members of Soroptimist International: President Alice Wells and Federation Programme Director Anna McCormick, as well as the former Programme Director Dawn Marie Lemonds, and from SI of the Americas: SIA Federation Programme Director Sharon Fisher, who have made me feel so welcomed. I’ve met the most lovely people (Robyn from SWP and Hillary from UK, Wanda and Vivian from SIA and others whose names didn’t register with me) and am so incredibly thankful to be here!
Many women are not safe in their own homes – don’t condone domestic violence through silence – take action. Ring the bell.
An international campaign launched by Breakthrough in 2008, Bell Bajao! calls upon men and boys to take a stand against domestic violence and work towards eliminating all forms of violence against women. These vingettes are real examples of men who demonstrated zero tolerance: http://www.bellbajao.org/home/portfolio/
This coming week marks the 57th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW57), to be held at the United Nations in New York City. I will be joining the Soroptimist International delegation, a team of 40 women representing over 120 countries across the four Federations that make up our organization: Americas, South West Pacific, Europe and Great Britain & Ireland.
The priority theme at CSW57 is “elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls”. It is an issue that exists here in Hamilton in the forms of domestic violence and human slavery (forced marriage, sexual exploitation and forced labour). There will also be a review at CSW57 of the theme from the 53rd session regarding the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS. Learn more about the issues on the UN Women: In Focus website (http://www.unwomen.org/news-events/in-focus/csw57/)»
I have been passionate about the mission of Soroptimist International and their role as an NGO at the United Nations. This year, I put my name forward for consideration and was informed that there is a lottery process within our Federation. By pure chance (or fate), there were three vacancies and my name came up! I am very excited to be attending and I will be blogging about my experience during the week (mostly in the evenings because WIFI is harder to come by than I thought).
The position Soroptimist International has taken is to abide by all previously agreed UN declarations, conventions
and resolutions relating to the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls. Specifically:
1. Prioritise and adequately resource policies, programmes, and interventions with education, empowerment, and enabling opportunities at their core, not just for victim/survivors or perpetrators, but for all men, women, boys, and
girls as accountable community members.
2. Institutionalise the responsibilities and obligations of the State and individual members of society to actively tackle the root causes of violence against women and girls.
3. Ensure that violence against women and girls is not labelled “private” and thus out of the reach of the hands of the State and/or the community.
4. Ensure that actions taken to eliminate violence against women and girls – prevention or resolution focussed – are systems-based and holistic, rather than project-based and vertical.
5. End any and all approaches, activities, or policies which promulgate the victim/saviour dichotomy and ensure meaningful, respectful, and human rights based approaches to eliminating violence against women and girls.
“Today we are aware that one in three women will experience violence in her lifetime. We still live in a world where violence against women and girls persists as a weapon of war. We come to the 57th Session of CSW to ask the question – why?” – International President, Alice Wells
