The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) began its 10-day session in New York on Monday, amid efforts by the United States to weaken women’s rights proposed in the draft outcome document.

The theme of the CSW, the world’s biggest global meeting on women’s rights, is “ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls.”

But the US, after initially abstaining from negotiations on the outcome document to be adopted by CSW, changed tack in the past few days and urged the removal of “controversial social issues” from the document, Devex reports.

The US wants references to climate change and a gender-responsive justice sector removed, and does not support the proposed reparations fund for survivors of violence, for example.

However, the entire purpose of the CSW’s 70th session is to chart a path to eliminating gender discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, as well as structural barriers to justice – and the outcome document due to be adopted by the end of Monday was supposed to guide this.

However, the US stance is similar to last year, when it refused to endorse the CSW’s final declaration last year, rejecting references to the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and dismissing gender quotas, climate policies and even the Sustainable Development Goals as “globalist overreach”.

Fewer rights

Women only have 64% of the legal rights of men, according to a report issued last week by the UN Secretary-General.

“Globally, 54% of countries lack consent-based legal definitions of rape, while 72% allow child marriage in all or some circumstances,” according to the report.

“More than 45 countries retain at least one provision in their legislation regarding nationality that discriminates on the basis of gender, and 44% of countries do not have legislation that mandates equal remuneration for work of equal value.”

In many countries, women’s rights are weakening. The position of women and girls who live near conflicts – 676 million in 2024 – is particularly dangerous. 

“The number of conflict-related sexual violence violations documented by the United Nations has increased by 87% in just two years,” according to the report.

Iran, Gaza and Afghanistan

Raising the plight of women and children in Iran, Gaza and Afghanistan, Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai told the CSW opening session: “Never have I seen so many children suffering from war and violence, injured and dying at the hands of unaccountable leaders.

“I am devastated for families in Iran whose daughters left for school and did not return home, for parents in Gaza who buried their children beneath the rubble of their classrooms, for Afghan girls living under the brutal Taliban regime for nearly five years,” said Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist shot in the head as a schoolgirl for advocating for the right of girls to education.

“You will be hearing a lot this week about access to justice, but true justice does not defend the humanity of children in one place and ignore it in another,” added Yousafzai, who lived in a territory of Pakistan under Taliban rule.

“It is not selectively applied. It does not claim that our rights are dependent on where we were born or what is politically safe for the people in this room. Under international law, killing children in their classrooms is a war crime.

“When civilians are deprived of food, water, medicine and shelter, the law obligates states to act. Looking around the world today, we must ask ourselves why justice is a privilege.”

Yousafzai said that nowhere is the backlash against women and girls more evident than in Afghanistan: “Since the Taliban took over the country in 2021, they have controlled courts, the police, and they have used their power to abuse women and girls, preventing them from going to school or university. Women cannot go to work, leave their homes without a male chaperone, or even speak in public.”

Afghan singer Sunbul Reha also addressed the CSW opening, appealing to the UN delegates to “protect a girl’s right to an education, defend a woman’s right to speak out safely and without retaliation [and] fight to block the erosion of our progress.”

Merger plan?

Country delegates may also discuss the potential merger of UN Women and UNFPA, which deals with sexual and reproductive health, first mooted by the UN Secretary-General in his plan to reform the UN, UN80.

The US has withdrawn from both bodies and defunded them, sparking a serious resource crisis.

The global feminist organisation, Fos Feminista, and other groups have opposed the merger, stressing that the two have different functions with little overlap.

For Fos Feminista, UN Women was created to “hold the entire UN system accountable for gender equality” with a mandate to ensure “gender equality is not treated as an afterthought but as a binding obligation”.

“UNFPA, meanwhile, leads on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), population data and demographic analysis, humanitarian gender-based violence coordination and reproductive health supply chains that reach women in the most fragile settings. Its work is technical, operational and often lifesaving.”