Women, Girls Take U.N. Center Stage This Week
Women, Girls Take U.N. Center Stage This Week
Policy making currents are washing around girls and women at the U.N. now as a major rights proclamation turns 20 and a set of global development goals prepares to re-launch. Here's taking some stock of it all, including a quick sampling of major milestones since 1995.
Phumzile Mlambo-NgcukaUN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at last week's Commission on the Status of Women curtain raiser press conference.Credit: Alana Chloe Esposito
UNITED NATIONS (WOMENSENEWS)--As the United Nations crosses the 15-year finish line on one set of enormous international development goals and prepares to launch another set, policies affecting girls and women are at the center of attention here this week.
That's because the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which drives the U.N.'s agenda for women's empowerment, is turning 20 with a huge splash of meetings and reports released in a thicket of official and sideline gatherings. All that activity is tied to the annual March 9 -20 meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women.
Things got started on Sunday, March 8, International Women's Day, with a march for gender equality and women's rights from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza outside the U.N. to Times Square.
Some U.N. Gender Milestones Since 1995
Widespread ratification of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW); (which the US has STILL not ratified!)
Passage of Resolution 1325 requiring parties to armed conflict to protect women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence and include them in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction (2000);
Prioritizing women's empowerment in the Millennium Development Declaration and goals MDGs No. 3 and No. 5 (2000);
Passage of Resolution 1820 recognizing rape and other forms of sexual violence in conflict situations as a war crime and a crime against humanity (2008);
Establishing UN Women as the secretariat for the Commission on the Status of Women, providing a main frame body exclusively dedicated to promoting gender equality (2010);
Launching an awareness campaign, HeForShe, to engage men and boys in challenging discriminatory attitudes toward women (2014).
. . . .
http://womensenews.org/story/international-policyunited-nations/150310/women-girls-take-un-center-stage-week
