Editor's Note

The 68th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women was held at the headquarters in New York not long ago. The meeting focused on gender equality and women's empowerment, aiming to promote the goal of gender equality through global wisdom and concerted efforts. The meeting stressed the importance of investing in women, developing green economy and caring economy for accelerating the realization of gender equality, and also put forward new strategies to solve poverty problems from the perspective of gender equality, strengthen institutions and financing to accelerate the realization of gender equality. As an important outcome of the Conference, the agreed conclusions reaffirmed the importance of gender equality for sustainable development and urged Governments, the United Nations system and relevant organizations to take practical measures to ensure the full and equal participation of women and girls in economic, social and political life. At the same time, through a series of side meetings and parallel activities, the conference built a bridge of cooperation for the government, the United Nations and civil society organizations to jointly promote the development of gender equality and women's empowerment.

■ Li Yingtao

Recently, the 68th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (hereinafter referred to as CSW) was held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA. The priority theme of this session of the Conference is "solving poverty from the perspective of gender equality, strengthening institutions and financing to accelerate the realization of gender equality and enhance the human rights of all women and girls"; The theme of the review was "Promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls through social security systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure". The General Assembly's discussion on "emerging issues, trends, focus areas and new approaches to addressing issues affecting the situation of women, including gender equality" focused on "AI for gender equality: challenges and opportunities". The General Assembly adopted the Agreed Conclusions on its priority theme.

Agenda of the General Assembly: Gathering Global Wisdom for Accelerating Gender Equality

According to the Economic and Social Council resolution "Future organization and methods of work of the Commission on the Status of Women" of 8 June 2022, the official formal meeting of the sixty eighth session of the Conference includes a number of agendas.

The first is the general debate. Focusing on the follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women and the twenty third special session of the United Nations General Assembly, the conference organized several general debates on related issues. The second is the ministerial round table. For the priority theme of the conference, the conference arranged four ministerial round tables around two sub themes. Finally, the General Assembly also arranged informal consultations on the Agreed Conclusions and closed meetings to consider the report of the Working Group on Communications.

These activities provided an important platform and excellent opportunity for the conference theme and other important gender equality issues discussed by United Nations Member States, United Nations entities and non-governmental organizations, and gathered global wisdom for accelerating the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

The focus of the conference: to formulate a new development strategy centered on green and caring economy

The 2023 Sustainable Development Goals Report shows that most countries in the world have made some progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (hereinafter referred to as the 2030 Agenda), but the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed this progress, and about half of the specific goals are off track. In terms of gender equality, only 15.4% of the indicators are progressing smoothly, 61.5% of the indicators are moderately far from the 2030 target, and 23.1% of the indicators are far from the target, or even off track. At the current rate, it is estimated that it will take 300 years to eliminate child marriage, 286 years to eliminate the gap in legal protection and eliminate discriminatory laws, and 140 years to enable women to achieve equality in power and leadership positions in the workplace; 47 years to achieve equal representation in Congress; Young women are more than twice as likely as young men to be out of school, unemployed or lose training opportunities; Two thirds of the world's population can use the Internet, but the gender gap still exists. If current trends continue, more than 340 million women and girls will live in extreme poverty by 2030.

Against this background, the United Nations convened an expert meeting on the priority theme of this session of the Conference in October 2023. The report of the expert meeting stressed that, first of all, women's poverty is a process of deprivation and damage, which is shaped in multiple structural inequalities such as family, labor market and the country and is exacerbated by cross discrimination. Secondly, in the context of multiple crises, it is imperative to take action to eradicate poverty among women by using all economic and social policies; We will comprehensively reform the international financial institutions and establish a real global financial safety net and financial space for public investment needed to eradicate poverty among women. Thirdly, in order to maximize the effectiveness of climate finance and benefit women living in poverty, donors should ensure that high-quality climate finance grants that promote gender equality are provided to women led organizations in local communities, and that they are combined with technical assistance and capacity-building. Finally, invest in women, formulate new development strategies, develop a green economy and a care economy called the purple economy, reduce women's unpaid care and housework, and create purple and green jobs for women and girls living in poverty.

In January 2024, the United Nations will release the report of the Secretary General on the priority theme of this session of the Conference. First, the report points out that women and girls living in poverty are deprived of the right to equal enjoyment of a decent life, food security, adequate nutrition and adequate housing, and suffer multiple and cross forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, disability, marital and immigration status, HIV infection status, sexual orientation and gender identity; Their access to land, property, health care, family planning, education and the labour market has been restricted or severely restricted; Climate change, financial exclusion and lack of access to financial services also contributed to women's poverty. Secondly, the report emphasizes strengthening institutions and financing to eradicate poverty among women and girls, urges governments and other stakeholders to incorporate a gender perspective into development financing commitments, expand financial investment space to eliminate poverty among women and girls, strengthen accountability of public institutions, and ensure the participation and financing of women's organizations and collectives. Finally, the report proposes to formulate new development strategies to promote sustainable economy and society, ensure that all development strategies comply with the obligation to respect, protect and realize the human rights of poor women, and introduce new measurement standards beyond GDP to reflect the value and contribution of unpaid care work to economic and social progress; Substantially increase investment in the care economy as a source of decent employment that has the potential to narrow the gender gap and develop appropriate measures to ensure that women can benefit from the transition to a sustainable economy.

At the opening ceremony of this session of the Conference, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN Women's Programme Bahus pointed out that "we need an inclusive and gender responsive social security system to provide women and girls living in poverty with full and equal opportunities and benefits." "We need to invest in the care economy as a strategy to reduce poverty among women and girls and build a stronger care and green economy."

Agreed conclusions: strengthening the synergy between the Beijing Platform for Action and the 2030 Agenda

The sixty eighth session of CSW adopted the Agreed Conclusions on the priority theme of the General Assembly "Addressing poverty from a gender perspective, strengthening institutions and financing to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls".

The agreed conclusions reaffirmed the need to strengthen the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the outcome document of the twenty third special session of the General Assembly and its review outcome document; Reaffirms the importance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, its Optional Protocols and other relevant conventions and treaties for achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. In order to address poverty from a gender perspective, strengthen institutions and financing to accelerate the achievement of gender equality and empower all women and girls, the Agreed Conclusions urge governments at all levels, together with relevant entities of the United Nations system and international and regional organizations, to consider national priorities within their respective mandates, and invite civil society, Take the following measures as appropriate.

First, integrate a gender perspective into development financing commitments. Take action to fully implement existing commitments and obligations so that women can fully and equally enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination; Addressing poverty from the perspective of gender equality, strengthening institutions and financing, ensuring women's full, equal and effective participation in decision-making and leadership at all levels in the economic field, and eliminating all forms of violence and discrimination, including gender based violence; Linking economic, social and environmental development policies, increasing public investment, supporting human resource capacity development, addressing unpaid care work, and supporting all women's access to decent work; Ensure that all women and girls can enjoy the benefits of digital technology, and strive to narrow the digital divide, including the gender digital divide.

Second, implement economic and social policies to promote gender equality and strengthen public institutions. Strengthen the authority, professional skills and resources of the national machinery for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, so as to provide support using the approach of promoting gender equality, and integrate gender perspectives into the mainstream of ministries and public institutions, including government agencies of labor, economy and finance; Implement legislation and policies to prevent and combat corruption in all its forms, and ensure that resources are used for poverty alleviation, high-quality public infrastructure, public services, and social security on which poor women rely.

Third, expand financial space and invest in poverty eradication of women and girls. Broaden financial space, strengthen mechanisms, support economic and social transformation with a view to eradicating poverty among women, and ensure sustainable development by focusing on reducing systemic risks and structural inequalities; Recognizes the urgent need to provide predictable, sustainable and adequate financing for development to developing countries from all sources in order to significantly increase resources to eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions, which affects women and girls; Support gender responsive budgeting and track public expenditure in all sectors.

Fourth, we should promote the adoption of new development strategies towards a sustainable economy and society. Encourages advocacy for programmes to enhance women's leadership and women owned businesses, promote gender equality and empower women economically; Strengthening international and regional cooperation; Focusing on common development priorities, involving all stakeholders, while stressing that national ownership and leadership are essential to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls and improving their lives and well-being; Ensure that official development assistance is effectively used to invest in achieving gender equality and empowering poor women and girls, thereby helping developing countries achieve their development goals.

Fifth, contact and finance women's organizations and collectives. Provide strong, sustainable and flexible multi-year funding for all civil society organizations to advocate for the protection and promotion of the right to work; Fully mobilize men and boys to act as agents and beneficiaries of change, strategic partners and allies, promote gender equality, enhance women's and girls' rights, including their economic empowerment, and respect their rights and fundamental freedoms; Women and men should equally share the responsibility for care and household work, and should be segregated from each other in work and life in all sectors; Eliminate social norms that condone violence against women and girls.

Sixth, strengthen multidimensional poverty data and statistics. Strengthen the capacity of national statistical offices and government agencies to collect, analyze, disseminate and use disaggregated data and gender statistics on multidimensional poverty, including women and girls living in poverty, the formal and informal economy, income and asset distribution within families, unpaid care and domestic work, women's access to, control over and ownership of assets and productive resources Women's participation in decision-making at all levels; Strengthen cooperation with all relevant stakeholders to systematically collect and analyse comprehensive disaggregated data; Develop classified and gender sensitive measurement methods for sustainable development progress.

The agreed conclusions reaffirmed the central role played by UN Women in promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls, and emphasized the synergy between ensuring the follow-up of the Beijing Platform for Action and the follow-up of the 2030 Agenda for promoting gender equality.

Border meetings and parallel activities: building a bridge for cooperation between the government, the United Nations and civil society organizations

During the 68th CSW, the side meetings held by permanent missions, intergovernmental organizations and United Nations entities around the theme of the meeting covered a wide range of issues, including the elimination of violence, discrimination, poverty and other old issues, as well as new challenges such as financial inclusion and gender digital divide. Representative activities include: UN Women's "Generational Equality: Promoting Feminist Financing and Accountability for Women's Economic Justice and Poverty Eradication"; "Financial Inclusion Promotes Gender Equality" by the Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations, the Permanent Mission of the European Union to the United Nations and the UN Women's Office; "Using South South Cooperation to Promote Gender Equality: Reflections from the Global South" by the United Nations Office for South South Cooperation, UN Women's Office, etc; "Promoting accountability and leadership: a global platform for achieving gender equality through education" by UNESCO, UNICEF, etc., and "Empowering women and investing: how digital inclusion can narrow the gender gap" by the International Telecommunication Union and the UNESCO Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, etc.

The active participation of non-governmental organizations is a key element in the work of the Commission on the Status of Women. Non governmental organizations in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations will have multiple opportunities to participate in UNIFEM. First of all, a few non-governmental organizations can make oral statements during the general discussion and interactive dialogue. The organizers of the meeting will give priority to non-governmental organizations that discuss the priority theme or review the theme, as well as non-governmental institutions that speak on behalf of organizational groups, core groups or alliances. Secondly, in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31, these organizations can also submit written statements on the topics considered by the Commission on the Status of Women at its sixty eighth session. For example, the Asia Pacific Women's Watch, a regional women's human rights network in the Asia Pacific region, pointed out in a statement submitted to the meeting that "gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls are prerequisites for the realization of the Beijing Platform for Action, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other international commitments." Again, a large number of parallel events organized by non-governmental organizations continued to be active, It constituted the non-governmental forum of the 68th Women's Land Society. The annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women has gathered global forces to promote gender equality and promoted the trend of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The General Assembly combined the intergovernmental consultation and dialogue with a distinctive theme with the rich and diverse sideline meetings and parallel activities with different views around the world, providing a platform for different stakeholders to discuss the theme of this session of the Conference and other important gender equality issues, and linking global civil society, basic organizations and the official process of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Gender equality is not only a human rights challenge but also a sustainable development challenge. Investing in women is also a means to safeguard women's human rights and a path to achieve sustainable development. To this end, the international community, governments and stakeholders need to commit themselves to investing in women, eradicating poverty among women, implementing financing to promote gender equality, paying attention to the development of green economy and care economy, and accelerating the realization of the Beijing Platform for Action and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

(The author is a professor in the School of International Relations of Beijing Foreign Studies University and director of the Center for Gender and Global Issues Research.)