No
CSW Agreed Conclusions on Women's Human Rights and Elimination of
All Forms of Violence Against Women and Girls
Center for Women's Global
Leadership
The 47th Commission
on the Status Women (CSW)
The
47th session of the United Nations CSW was held from March 3-14, 2003,
at UN headquarters in New York. The majority of the discussions at
CSW focused on two thematic issues: participation and access
of women to the media, and information and communication technologies
and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and
empowerment of women and women's human rights and elimination of
all forms of violence against women and girls as defined in the
Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome document of the Special
Session for the General Assembly entitled "Women: gender equality,
development and peace for the twenty-first century." Every
year, the CSW reviews a few themes in depth usually related to the
Beijing Platform for Action and develops "Agreed Conclusions"
on what governments and the inter-governmental system should be doing
about them.
This
year, the CSW did adopt the agreed conclusions on women's access
to the media and information and communication technologies and
resolutions concerning Afghanistan, Palestine, and HIV/AIDS.1
Yet, when the CSW ended on March 14th, consensus had not be reached
on the agreed conclusions on women's human rights and elimination
of all forms of violence against women and girls. The Commission
met in a resumed session on March 23rd and the Bureau shared that
the CSW was unable to reach consensus on the agreed conclusions
on human rights and violence against women.2
The
Political Context - The War in Iraq
This session was held at the same time in the same building as the
Security Council negotiations only days before the start of the
war in Iraq. At that time, it had become clear that if the Security
Council did not endorse a war in Iraq, the United States and United
Kingdom were prepared to start a unilateral war which they did.
It was impossible for NGOs and government delegates at the CSW not
to be affected by the pending war in Iraq and by the breakdown there
of efforts to reach agreements and make compromises.
By
the time of the resumed session, March 23rd, the war in Iraq had
begun, the United States and the United Kingdom had attacked Iraq
without the support of the Security Council and in this climate
there was no mood for reaching agreements. After the war began,
the United States and the United Kingdom said that they did not
want their unilateral actions to set a precedent in international
law. Similarly, in the resumed session of the CSW, governments said
that they hoped that the inability of this CSW to come to consensus
would not set a precedent for future Commissions.
The
Broader Political Context
The negotiations at this Commission also surfaced the on-going breakdown
at the UN of preceding international alliances and consensus building
negotiations. In part, the consensus methodology has worked because
governments have negotiated within and between regional voting blocs.
At this CSW, the only voting blocs were the EU and the Rio Group
(19 Latin American and Caribbean countries), neither the G77 nor
the JUSCANZ (Japan, United States, Canada and New Zealand) spoke
as a group. In the past, governments met in their regional blocs,
negotiated and reached consensus and the bloc representative brought
that consensus to the larger discussion. This methodology has allowed
for typically 5 or so representatives negotiating in the larger
discussions. This year approximately 35 different government delegations
spoke, though some spoke more frequently than others, making it
difficult to reach consensus.
Beijing
+ 10 Discussions
It is ironic that while the CSW was failing to reach a consensus
on violence against women and human rights, some NGOs at the CSW
were discussing the question of the ten-year review of implementation
of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the fifth
world conference on women. In part because of the political climate
and recent negotiations at the CSW and other venues, NGOs felt that
any review of the Beijing Platform for Action in 2005 should concentrate
on reports on implementation and that there should be no negotiated
text. For a more detailed summary of NGO discussions about a Fifth
World Conference on Women and the 2005 CSW Review of the Beijing
Platform for Action visit
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/csw03/index.html.
Fundamentalists
Coalescing and Contentious Issues
In the final stages of the negotiations, much attention was paid
to Iran's refusal to accept a proposed paragraph on religion which
read as follows: "Condemn violence against women and refrain
from invoking any custom, tradition or religious consideration to
avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination as set out
in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women."
Iran wanted to add "and refrain from invoking freedom of expression
to justify such manifestations of violence against women as pornography,
and democracy to justify prostitution." The original paragraph,
without Iran's suggested addition, is a paragraph from the Declaration
on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women and was
therefore already "agreed language". The facilitator suggested
that if governments could not agree on new issues, that they should
at least be able to consent to previously agreed language. Ultimately,
this strategy was futile.
In
the post CSW discussions, this paragraph has been the one that receives
most attention. While, it was clear that Iran was unwilling to compromise,
they were not the only government resisting consensus. Sudan was
committed to undermining any attempt to call for the recognition
of women's rights to have control over their sexuality and sexual
and reproductive health. There were a few issues that were still
being held hostage in the final hour of the negotiations, namely:
the correlation between violence against women and HIV/AIDS; use
of religion to justify violence against women; the recognition of
women's right to control over their sexuality and access to sexual
and reproductive health free of coercion; and ending impunity for
violence against women in situations of armed and post-conflict
situations. The governments unwilling to agree to several of these
paragraphs, none of which contained new language, were most notably
Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan and the United States. These governments
employed the strategy that if consensus could not be reached, then
paragraphs that remained should be deleted.
Other
controversial issues at the CSW were human rights, the right to
development, and the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapportuer
on Violence Against Women.
Human
Rights
There were many attempts to weaken the human rights language even
though the conclusions were on women's human rights and violence
against women. One strategy, lead primarily by the United States
was to weaken or delete any references to international instruments
such as CEDAW and the ICC. Other attempts to weaken the references
to human rights language included qualifiers such as "as appropriate"
and "internationally recognized" in many of the paragraphs
on human rights. Canada, the EU, South Africa, the Rio Group, and
New Zealand worked arduously to ensure the retention of strong human
rights language. This effort to weaken how violence is linked to
human rights was also visible in Geneva at the Commission on Human
Rights (CHR), which did pass a violence against women resolution
but not without contentions.3
The
Right to Development
While the G77 did not speak as a bloc, the majority of delegations
from the Global South called for the recognition of the right to
development in the introductory chapeau paragraph. The EU, Canada
and the United States, called for the deletion of this reference
and defended their position by stating that no one right should
be highlighted. This is not a new struggle and has surfaced at many
UN meetings.
The
UN Special Rapportuer on Violence Against Women
The Canadian delegation introduced an opening paragraph, in the
agreed conclusions that welcomed the work of the UN Special Rapportuer
on Violence Against Women and an operative paragraph calling on
the Commission on Human Rights to renew the mandate of the UN Special
Rapportuer on Violence Against Women, its causes and consequences.
Egypt, Pakistan, Cuba and the Rio Group did not want to welcome
the work of the Special Rapportuer on Violence Against Women. Despite
the call in the Beijing Platform for Action for the renewal of the
mandate of the Special Rapportuer on Violence Against Women, Egypt
along with Syria, Cuba and Senegal, said that it was not the work
of the CSW to urge the CHR to renew the mandate.
Agreed
Conclusions and Future CSWs
This year's CSW highlighted the increasing difficulties at achieving
consensus in the international arena. After it was agreed that no
document would be adopted, New Zealand (on behalf of Canada, Australia,
Norway and Switzerland) made a really strong closing statement about
future sessions of the CSW. Since the Beijing World Conference on
Women, many governments have established national machineries to
advance the rights of women, and governments often send high-ranking
officials from these national machineries to the CSW. New Zealand
suggested that the CSW should think about how to best use the expertise
of these officials that come from national machineries to the CSW
and that the time of the CSW could be more wisely spent discussing
best practices, identifying new and emerging issues and strategies
for implementation rather than trying to agree on negotiated text
based conclusions.
Especially
since Beijing +5 in 2000, many women's rights advocates at the CSW
have not only been frustrated by the political climate and the lack
of political will of many governments but also by the anemic agreed
conclusions resulting from consensus procedures. There has been
little clarity on the purpose of the agreed conclusions and too
little use made of them. The documents produced are often weak and
lack mechanisms for reporting on the implementation of the suggested
actions. Did governments not come to consensus on violence against
women and human rights because they knew that their inaction would
have no consequences? As NGOs we need to think about how the CSW
can be used more strategically and innovatively to advance the human
rights of women.
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