NEW YORK, NEW YORK (August 23, 2012)—On March 8, 2012, International Women’s Day, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and President of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar, made a joint statement proposing that the UN hosts a 5th World Conference on Women in 2015. While this announcement was met with some enthusiasm, many women’s organizations, which are excited to commemorate the 20th year of the Beijing Platform for Action in 2015, also expressed concern about having a UN conference, which implies a negotiated text. Unfortunately, in 2012 we have seen the results of having negotiated text in the current geo-political climate: governments failed to reach conclusions at CSW-56, Rio+20 was not the progressive conference it needed to be and governments could not agree upon an Arms Trade Treaty.
Therefore, following consultations with feminist, social justice and human rights organizations, a number of women’s rights and allied organizations have been meeting with various representatives from the UN Secretary General’s office, the President of the General Assembly’s office, UN Women and member states to discuss a way forward on the SG and PGA’s announcement. An informal group of organizations decided to draft an NGO resolution that would better reflect the type of high-level Beijing+20 commemoration that the signatories of the draft, which includes WEDO, are supporting.
This proposed draft resolution calls for governments to convene at the highest levels to recommit to the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) and expedite implementation.
The endorsing organizations are using the NGO resolution as an advocacy tool with governments and civil society to ask for support for an alternative modality to commemorate Beijing Plus 20. The full text of the document and its signatories can be found here:
http://www.gearcampaign.org/news_events/uncategorized/draft-resolution-on-the-commemoration-of-the-twentieth-anniversary-the-fifth-world-conference-on-women/.
