Invite to Engender event on Beijing+15

24 Nov 2009

 

Background

The UN Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, agreed a Global Declaration of women’s rights and a Platform for Action (PfA) for achieving them.
15 years on, it’s time to review progress. The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will meet in March 2010 to hear reports from Member States on how they have met the commitments made at Beijing, to share best practice and to consider future action. NGOs with consultative status will also give their assessment of their governments’ achievements (shadow reports).

Early in 2010 Engender will submit a shadow report to the CSW committee describing the reality of progress for women in Scotland.

As part of this process, Engender is keen to draw in feedback from diverse sectors and from women's NGOs and individual women. We want to create visibility for the discussion and for the meeting in New York, hoping both to encourage participation by the Scottish government and to raise awareness among Scottish leaders and citizens and of the importance of UN and EU rights mechanisms.

Engender has UN consultative status and we are planning to send a delegation to CSW and to sponsor a side event, pending finding financial support. We are thinking about a discussion of the gender impact of stimulus spending OR a look at why ‘structural inequality’ is a problem when UK (and other developed countries) development officers discuss women's inequality in third world countries but disappears in the same governments' discussions of gender inequality in their own country.

Come and tell us what you think