.png) For the first time in some years, the United States government showed a renewed commitment towards advancing women’s human rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights. The United States reaffirmed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Moreover, the United States fully recognized the 2005 World Summit and the Millennium Development Goals. The governments of United States, New Zealand and Canada took the lead in pushing for explicit language on comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services in the context of equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men as well as in care-giving and HIV/AIDS. Countries that supported these proposals were: Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Turkey. Countries that opposed this language were: Syria, Iran, Qatar and Yemen, and to a lesser extent the Africa Group led by Egypt and the European Union. Like in 2008, Malta successfully blocked EU consensus on strong SRHR language.
It is important to note that the Africa Group as led by Egypt obstructed efforts to increase the visibility of the issues faced by Africa where women, often elder women, and girls, bear the disproportionate burden of caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS. Egypt took its usual position, speaking on behalf of the Africa Group, to limit strong language on women and girls’ rights, SRH, and sexuality education. An interesting fact at this CSW was the lack of facilitation skills of the facilitator himself, from Armenia, who got into virtual screaming matches with Syria, did not propose text to help advance the negotiations and wanted to drop all the paragraphs that had not been agreed upon at midday on the last day. These areas included the Gender Equality Architecture Reform paragraph, language around protecting women and girls from violence, gender stereotypes, and human rights.
Source: IWHC, IPPF WHR
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