UNITED NATIONS
Women's Rights Worlwide
Commission on the Status of Women
CSW, 1-12 March 2010
IAW prepared for CSW 2010 very well with two side events, as sponsor of other events, two oral statements on 'Decision-making by Women in Conflict' and 'Of Hunger, Climate Change and the Empowerment of Women', and with a shadow report on Beijing+15.
Several IAW members will be speakers on panels.
We wish our delegations and members all the best!
CSW venue: in front country delegations, at the bacl on the balcony the NGOs.
It will be a busy CSW, with 188 side events.
The year 2010 will also be a busy year for the UN and for IAW. After CSW we will have to focus on the implementation during the first 10 years of resolution 1325 of the Security Council.
In September there is the Summit of the Millennium Development Goals, which have still 5 years to go until 2015. And will there be a new U.N. agency for women installed during the UN General Assembly?
IAW and Vrouwenbelangen
Every year both the International Alliance of Women and Vrouwenbelangen are sending delegations to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York. Anje Wiersinga will be present for Vrouwenbelangen. Lyda Verstegen was not been able to go. But ... she was head editor of the IAW shadow report Beijing +15. It will be printed on IWNews and is also to be found on the IAW website. Strongly recommended!
On this page also news of CEDAW, the Millennium Development Goals and the UN Human Rights Council.
IAW side events at CSW
Gender Equality and Climate Change
Opportunities and Challenges for the MDGs ”
UN Side event at the 54th session of the UN CSW
Tuesday, March 2, 11:30 am to 1:00pm
UN Conference room C (46th Street and First Avenue)
Moderated by Soon-Young Yoon (see picture), International Alliance of Women
Speakers
* “Continuing the commitment”
Minister Stefan Wallin, Minister of Culture and Sport (invited)
* “An update on the status of the climate change negotiations related to gender issues”
Monique Essed-Fernandes, Interim Executive Director, Women’s Environment and Development Organization 
* “Not to forget: integrating gender into climate change finance mechanisms”
Winnie Byanyima, Director, Gender Team, UNDP
* “The final deal—a US perspective” (see picture)
Ambassador Melanne Verveer, US Ambassador for Global Women’s Affairs
* “Looking forward to Conference of the Parties 16 in Mexico”
(representative from the government of Mexico – invited)
Gender and Climate Change—the Untold Story of Copenhagen
Thursday, March 4, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
NGO Side event at the 54th session of the UN CSW
(Salvation Army auditorium at 221 52nd Street, NY, NY 10022)
Moderated by Soon-Young Yoon, International Alliance of Women
Speakers
* The good news from Copenhagen: a history-making year for gender and climate change
Cate Owren, Sustainable Development Program Coordinator, WEDO
* Climate change and health – what’s missing?
Dr Peju Olukoya , Department of Gender, Women and Health, WHO
* Climate change knowledge development: indigenous women in Asia
Govind Kelkar, Regional Programme Coordinator, Economic Security and Rights, UNIFEM
* What must happen at COP 16
Monique Essed-Fernandes, Interim Executive Director, WEDO
Discussant: Rosy Weiss, President, International Alliance of Women
Co-sponsors: International Alliance of Women, Global Gender Climate Alliance, NGO/CSW/NY subcommittee on women and climate change, Women’s Climate Initiative, Women’s Environment and Development
DISASTERS - DISASTERS - DISASTERS
“We can expect more extreme weather events,
more water and more drought situations”
Margareta Wahlström, Assistant Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction
has to step up action and global cooperation on disaster risk reduction, as climate change ste
adily increases the number and intensity of natural disasters worldwide.
She leads the Geneva-based Secretariat for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) which promotes greater awareness of the importance of disaster reduction in order to build more resilient communities and reduce the human, social, economic and environmental losses due to disasters.
More on: http://www.un.org/apps/news/newsmakers.asp?NewsID=17
CEDAW
To date, 181 countries have ratified the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW);
over 120 have adopted national plans of action
for gender equality.
Vrouwenbelangen is one of the 54 Dutch organisaties who have supported the Dutch shadow report .
IAW at CSW 2009
The 53rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women has been held at the United Nations headquarters in New York from 2 to 13 March 2009. Priority theme: the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS.
IAW side event at CSW 2009
The Climate Change Negotiations — an Action Agenda”
Tuesday, March 3, 4:30 to 6:00 PM
Dag Hammarskjold Library (DHL) Auditorium
An excellent side even was organised, sponsored by the International Alliance of Women and the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA- members include the UNDP, UNEP, IUCN, Women’s Environment and Development Organization and more than 20 UN agencies and civil society organizations) and the Heinrich Boell Foundation.
Human Rights Council in 2009
IAW and Maternal Mortality
On 17 June 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution recognizing maternal death and morbidity (MDI) as pressing human rights concerns.
More than 1500 women and girls die every day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth; that translates to around 550,000 annually.
Helene Sackstein, IAW representative at the human Rights Council. worked with other NGOs for three years at this important resolution. Many deaths could have been prevented by better health care.
Picture: Helene Sackstein talking to Simone Chapuis, IAW Switzerland
Human Ri
ghts Council
High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay opened the ninth Session of the Human Rights Council in 2008 highlighting the importance of impartiality and adherence to the standard represented by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is “applied equally to all without political consideration.”
The Millennium Development Goals
Poverty has a Female Face
Nearly 330 million working women earn less than
$1 a day — 60 per cent of working people who
are still living in poverty. No wonder poverty still has a woman’s face, that it is passed on from generation to generation, that girls are pulled out of school to help make ends meet.
The Netherlands are scoring high on commitment on the Millennium Development Goals
Goal 1 calls for halving extreme poverty and hunger by year 2015.
Goal 2 calls for achieving universal primary education for all girls and boys.
Goal 3 calls for promoting gender equality and empowerment of women.
Goal 4 calls for reducing child mortality by two thirds.
Goal 5 calls for reducing by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.
Goal 6 calls for halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases.
Goal 7 calls for ensuring environmental sustainability by halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and achieving a significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by year 2020; and finally Goal 8 calls for developing global partnership for development.
Reducing the gender gap - Goal 3
The Dutch government has, in 2008, installed a fund of 50 million dollars for projects to reduce the gender gap of the specific Millennium Development Goal on gender equality and the empowerment of women (Goal 3).
Norway unveils campaign to achieve UN goal on child mortality, maternal health
Norway will spend $1 billion over the next decade to help in the fight in the developing world against infant mortality and deaths in childbirth, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted at a United Nations summit in 2000, its Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg announced today.
“Simple, affordable measures can save millions” of children's and mothers' lives, the Prime Minister said. Every year, 500,000 women die because of childbirth and 2 million babies lose their lives before the sun sets on their first day.
“The four million newborn who die in their first month may survive if they are breastfed [and] have access to antibiotics and health workers.” Norway will spend $1 billion over the next decade to help in the fight in the developing world against infant mortality and deaths in childbirth.