Every spring, thousands of government officials, activists and policy makers descend on the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City for two weeks of both high-level meetings and side-events at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
As CSW69 concluded this year, there was a sense of <em>plus ça change</em> – except the “changes” now take place behind closed doors under the control of a select few.
The CSW began in 1946 as one of the original sub-commissions of the UN’s Economic and Social Affairs Commission (ECOSOC). According to the CSW website, the annual meeting is now “a one-of-a-kind platform for feminists from around the world to advocate, learn and share experiences”.
The political declaration made at the outset of this year’s session stated that “No country has fully achieved gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls [and] that major gaps and obstacles remain”.
If the conclusion is <em>plus c'est la même chose</em>, what has changed at CSW? According to several organisations engaged in the work of monitoring the language and actions of UN agencies, the very structure of the event has altered, resulting in a more opaque and less democratic process.
According to Anna Halpine, founder of <a href="https://wya.net/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">World Youth Alliance</mark></a> (WYA), the CSW meetings have not been the same since the disruption of Covid.
In an interview, Halpine said that the new format “is worlds away from the open debate that once took place, during which stakeholders, consultants, and interested non-governmental organisations could actually participate, debate, and influence the outcome of the document”.
The CSW website states that, “the principal output of the Commission on the Status of Women is the agreed conclusions on priority themes set for each year”.
The side and parallel events hosted by NGOs and government missions during the annual gathering are meant to be just that: side events to the main work of the commission.
In past years, delegates of member states would work for the duration of the two-week session, often through the night, to hammer out the “agreed conclusions”. It was in these close negotiations that the battles over language – whether abortion is included as a human right or the inclusion of the term “gender” – were fought.
Halpine founded WYA in 1999 after she witnessed 32 young people take to the floor of the Conference on Population and Development at the UN. Claiming to speak for all three billion youth of the world, they demanded abortion as a right, the deletion of parental rights, and sexual rights for children.
The following day, Halpine went back to the UN with a few friends and bright pink flyers that declared the 32 could not possibly represent all the youth in the world and asked that the conference not “reduce us to our sexual faculties”.
“Our main concerns,” the flyer read, “are issues relating to education, family, employment and development.”
Halpine went on to found WYA. With teams established in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia Pacific, it trains young people to engage ambassadors, diplomats, and political leaders at platforms such as the UN, European Union and the Organisation of American States on issues related to human dignity.
“Over many years, WYA has worked closely on the language: what does it mean, what is the context, how it is developing and changing through use and the negotiating process, and to follow and use that language in accurate ways in our work and in highlighting how it impacts nations and communities directly,” she said.
That close attention and monitoring of the language is a hallmark of the work done not only by pro-life organisations like WYA and the <a href="https://c-fam.org"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Center for Family and Human Rights</mark></a> but also by the Permanent Mission of the Holy See at the UN.
This year marks 30 years since the fourth World Conference on Women at which the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPA) was adopted. Signed by 189 countries, the 1995 global policy document outlines 12 focus areas deemed essential for achieving equality for women throughout the world.
The Beijing declaration is the lodestar of the Commission on the Status of Women and every five years the CSW session focuses on the progress or regress made by member states.
Mary Ann Glendon, lawyer, Harvard professor and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, led the Vatican delegation at the Beijing conference in 1995.
In her 2024 memoir, <em>In the Courts of Three Popes</em>, Glendon notes that “some delegations from developing countries arrived at sessions involving sexual and reproductive matters with position papers that were identical to one another and whose language resembled the statements of Western abortion rights groups”.
Glendon writes that it was a coalition of European Union delegates who had “taken up leadership on the sexual and abortion rights front” and that the coalition’s “relentless focus” on those issues had “brought progress on other issues to a near standstill”.
That “relentless focus” on reproductive rights has remained a constant in the intervening 30 years and the avenues for dialogue are narrowing.
It is arguable whether Halpine could do what she did in 1999 at the UN today. Everything, she says, changed during Covid.
“During Covid, UN meetings were held online to solicit input for documents that they produced during this time. Input from NGOs was separate from that of the missions. It was said that this was all towards achieving "transparency" and "consultation” but it was a very easy process to control.”
The new format had a negative impact on WYA delegates’ ability to engage in the process.
“Our delegates often found that when they joined these meetings, well prepared and ready to listen and speak in a respectful manner, the sound would not work when they spoke, and then they would be dropped from the call.”
It would be easy to put such episodes down to the technical breakdowns which were a habitual part of life in lockdown, but the CSW has never returned to “normal.”
Last year was the first full, in-person meeting of CSW and Halpine says a new process, the “silent negotiation” was introduced.
“The Commission, the chair and facilitators, took various drafts to individual missions for their input and comment; these were collated and turned into drafts that went back and forth.
"In this way the document was finalised before the start of the Commission, and the first item on day one was the approval of the document.”
“I think there was general surprise about this both among member states and the NGOs,” said Halpine.
With its heavy emphasis on side and parallel events, CSW has become a “big expo” with the real work taking place behind closed doors. This leaves pro-life organisations like WYA strategising how best to address the new situation.
“Assuming this is the new status quo,” Halpine said, “we are working to ensure that our voice is present at the international meetings and making sure our positions are heard in the ways that are open to us: participation in side-events, hosting our own events, sharing our work and research, meeting one-on-one with missions and stakeholders. At the same time, we are prioritising our work in areas where we
Mgr Marco Formica, counsellor for the Permanent Mission of the Holy See, delivered the statement of the Holy See at the conclusion of the CSW on March 21.
The mission team opted to use its two-minute speaking slot to focus on the disruption of the CSW negotiation process.
“My delegation would encourage that the next report and the zero draft on the implementation of the BPDA follow its structure and be organised around the 12 critical areas of concern.”
The “zero draft” to which Formica refers is the working document once discussed and negotiated throughout the two weeks.
“We encourage a return to shorter zero drafts to assist in considerations and to exclusion of terminology known to be contentious.
"We also hope that in five years, the regular practice of a full reading of the zero draft will be possible in conformity with its nature and particular mission.”
<em>Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose</em>. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
<em>(A version of this feature was first published in <mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><a href="https://www.catholicregister.org/">The Catholic Registe</a>r</mark>/ Photo by CNS)</em>
