Blog#7: UN conference on women: some rights won, but more battles ahead

The article I've chosen for this week is entitlted "UN conference on women: some rights won, but more battles ahead." The article discuses the highs and lows on the UN conference on creating bills and legislation specifically on women's rights. As was expected there were some steps in the right direction but still much work to be done. One of the highs that the article highlights was the text on female rights defenders, protecting those who go and fight the good fight on behalf of women. There was also new language brought to the conversation that included recommending emergency contraceptive access to women who have been raped and a call for comprehensive sex education. Some losses for the conference was the dropping of anything stating rights for those of the LGBTQ community and rights for the protection for sex workers.

The UN Conference on Women was an overall a success in my opinion because any stride towards progress is a success. A part of the discussion did strike me as very "old fashion" and very focused on the gender roles that women are, even in today's society, expected to fit into and follow. The idea that leaders in the UN are still completely avoiding and ignoring the idea of women as individuals and only as objects used to help "strengthing the family" I view this as problem that needs to be addressed at the conference next year. I think that too the inability for the conference to come to some type of agreement on the protection of sex workers was quite sad.  Yes the stigma that surrounds sex workers could not be more negative and no matter what your views are on the job a sex worker performs they are still human beings and don't deserve to be violently attacked as a lot are simply because of what they do for a living.

The strides that were made in the UN Conference were quite amicable however as was expected there is much work to be done for the next conference next year. I think the author of the article said it best when she stated that " This is essentially new territory for the CSW and, if this year was anything to go by, we're going to have to fight every step of the way. With the future of half the world at stake, we can't afford not to."


Jacelle Cannon
April 2nd, 2013
10:48pm

http://www.pancap.org/en/news-global/1418-un-conference-on-women-some-rights-won-but-more-battles-ahead.html