To create the feeling of interaction during the virtual UN Women Town Hall Meeting with Civil Society (October 19, 2020), the organizers used Mentimeter, an interesting tool which was new to me. Participants were invited to respond to two questions using one word, and the responses were represented graphically. The words which were most often used were displayed larger. This...

What will people say 25 years from now say about what happened in 2020? With over 600 people from around the world joining an online Town Hall Meeting on October 19, 2020,  Lopa Bannerjee, Director of the UN Women Civil Society Division, opened with this thought-provoking question.

The first speaker was Asa Regner, Deputy Executive Director...

The 65th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW65) will take place in March 2021. NGO advocacy work starts months ahead, and we have already submitted several written statements to UN Women. The priority theme of CSW65 is women in leadership and decision-making, as well as ending violence against women, to achieve women's empowerment. FAWCO was the lead organization...

By Sue England, IWC Munich and Tia McLaughlin, AW Berkshire & Surrey     

On August 31, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held a town hall meeting on the issue of Women and the UN. Normally, this meeting would have taken place during the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March in NYC, but CSW was cancelled this year due to...

The CSW64 Bureau convened on Monday March 9 for a procedural meeting. All side events and NGO CSW Forum parallel events were cancelled. The opening session is available to view on UN Web TV. 

At the March 9 session, the Commission members voted unanimously to ratify a political declaration reiterating support for the gender equality action plan adopted at the...

Due to concerns about the Coronavirus (COVID-19), CSW64 was drastically scaled down: from a two-week session with hundreds of ancillary discussions, interactive meetings and roundtable discussions, and an NGO CSW Forum with over 500 scheduled events, to a two-hour procedural meeting.

Sixteen FAWCO members from Berlin, Bern, Denmark, London, Paris, Perth, The Philippines, Rome, Surrey, Vienna and the US had...

By Paula Daeppen (AWC Zürich)

The Beijing Platform for Action recognized the essential role of women in the development of sustainable and ecologically sound consumption and production patterns and in approaches to natural resource management, but in 1995, the urgent awareness of the devastating effects of climate change were not as evident as they are today. Today women are among the...

By Georgia Kallis (AWO Greece)

A quarter of a century after Beijing, 47 Government delegations, 867 participants, and representatives from 81 Civil Society Organizations gathered at the U.N. in Geneva for the Beijing +25 ECE Regional Review. National reports showed that although some progress has been made by some of the EU Member States on gender equality in the domains...

An enlightening session was the summary of the 51 Beijing+25 national reports in a regional synthesis, presented by Monika Linn, Sustainable Development and Gender Unit, ECE. Sadly, she reported little that was new, but the same issues we discussed five years ago at the Beijing+20 Review: 

• increasing violence against women, including cyber violence
• need for greater economic empowerment and political participation

This was a lively panel, and the level of interest and energy in the room was high. Government delegates and members of civil society addressed the serious need for great representation of women in policy and decision making, calling for more effective participation, collaboration, networking and partnering. Women's political engagement brings idea leadership as we share knowledge and policy solutions...