UN Commission on the Status of Women 2014 meets in New York
Still revved up from International Women’s Day? Good! For the next eleven days the UN Commission on the Status of Women is meeting in New York. Governments, the United Nations and NGOs from around the world will meet over the next two weeks to evaluate the progress and remaining challenges towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (#MDG), and start shaping the new development framework that will be put in place post 2015.
More than 6000 representatives from 860 organizations have registered for CSW58. Nearly 135 events have been organized by UN agencies at UN Headquarters in New York, alongside the official meetings of the Commission, as well as more than 300 parallel events hosted by the NGO community close to the UN premises. Fear not, there are a lot of feminists in New York!
Last year I had the opportunity to attend the CSW57 meeting in New York with the Catholic women’s organization, Saint Joan’s International Alliance (SJIA). SJIA organized a “side event” on issues of violence against women and particularly the response of the Catholic sisters and community members in Minnesota. At these events it is especially exciting to watch the Catholic organizations involved in this gathering, including the Sisters of Loretto, who have young volunteers organizing their delegation.
With the MDGs set to expire at the end of 2015, these discussions come at a critical moment, as UN Member States are looking ahead at defining the future global development roadmap – also known as the post-2015 agenda. Expectations are high that CSW58 will guide a forward-looking development blueprint that stresses the importance of ensuring women’s rights, empowerment and gender equality.
- Chat! Follow @UN_CSW on Twitter and UN CSW on Facebook. The hashtag is #CSW58, which you are invited to use when tweeting from events and to share your thoughts.
- Share! On a piece of paper in your own language write your message around the MDGs or the Post-2015 development agenda related to women and girls. Take a selfie and tweet it out via #CSW58 mentioning @UN_CSW. Your photo will be retweeted, and you collected with all of the images on the UN CSW Facebook page!
- Learn! Read more about the UN Commission on the Status of Women and this annual gathering: www.unwomen.org