[Brussels, 20 November 2019] Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing+25), and the
64th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW64), the EWL has prepared a statement,
“Our future – the time to deliver is now! Unfinished business: Turning vision into effective action”. Read our full statement here!
EWL CSW 2020 written statement final
This statement was presented to EU member states by the EWL’s Secretary-General, Joanna Maycock, at the EU Council Committee on Human Rights on CSW64 and Beijing+25 on 27 November 2019. Here, we emphasised the importance of a strong, united and common EU voice at CSW in support of Beijing+25. We asked member states to include women’s civil society organisations in their delegations to CSW64 and underscored the importance of a strong EU Strategy on Equality between Women and Men. There was strong support from EU member states who took the floor during the meeting.
CSW64 will take place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 9 to 20 March 2020. It will involve representatives of Member States, UN entities, and NGOs from around the world, and the EWL will be there as well! The session will focus on the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and its contribution towards the full realisation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In our statement, we recall that 25 years on from the Beijing Declaration, women across Europe continue to be held back and pushed down the political agenda through strict austerity measures and neoliberal policies. This has disproportionately impacted on the gender, pension and poverty gap and heightened women’s precarious work and the burden of unpaid care work. The continuum of violence against women and girls, including sexual exploitation in all its forms, and within the emerging digital revolution, continues to exist and must be a major priority for all governments to prevent and end.
The EWL is thus calling for the following:
- We call on governments to reaffirm the commitment to affirmative actions and gender mainstreaming, which remains the most powerful transformative tool to ensure that a gender perspective is an integral part of all policies and actions across the spectrum of every policy area, including in macro-economic policies and gender budgeting;
- We call on EU leaders, as decision-makers over the next five years, to accelerate the pace of change to guarantee women and girls their right to a free, equal and dignified life;
- We call for a robust European political strategy on equality between women and men with ambitious goals, targets, benchmarks and strong inter-institutional mechanisms and resources to support implementation, including annual ministerial meetings to monitor progress;
- We call on all EU member states to deliver a feminist economic model for the wellbeing of all, putting the care of ourselves, each other and the planet at its core;
- We call on all EU member states to reiterate their commitment to ending all forms of violence against women and girls and on the EU to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, the Istanbul Convention, as well as establish and implement a comprehensive framework to combat violence against women, including sexual exploitation and prostitution;
- We call on the UN and all governments to reaffirm their commitment to existing UN agreed language and instruments on women’s rights.
Attached documents
