What I Learned

Report on the 55th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) and the NGO parallel events including Anglican Women’s Empowerment (AWE), February 20-26, 2011: Anglican Women’s Empowerment AWE , Kim Robey, Chair. And, AWE at the UNCSW. My trip to NYC and the UNCSW was sponsored by AWE. Also sponsored was a woman from Haiti and a woman from the Philippines.

What I learned
In every workshop I attended at this UNCSW I learned that while nations and countries sign treatises and adopt laws, resolutions, and regulations pertaining to the equal access of women and girls to education, employment, and safety, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure the implementation of the treatises, laws, resolutions or regulations, nor process of accountability for living into them.

• Laws that emphasize “Domestic” ie domestic violence tend to do four things:
1. they perpetuate the idea that women are victims and therefore helpless,
2. they minimize the role of the perpetrator
3. they minimize the criminality of the violence perpetrated
4. some societies over look issues of domestic violence because the culture believes that what happens in the home is private and should be managed privately

• In other words laws need to be crafted that emphasize the criminality of the violence and perpetrator and eliminate the idea of the crime being “domestic.”

• Civil Society is dependent upon citizens becoming aware of the issues of their culture and being willing to act on behalf of the less fortunate within that culture
• Grassroots movements have power and can make a difference

• Micro-credit resources to women need to minimize the reporting and pay-back process which is currently over-burdening women who do not have access to technology

• Women need to become part of Peace Negotiations and Discussions – currently there are no women at the table, including none in the discussions taking place to restructure Egypt.

• The “Feminization” of AIDS and poverty is minimizing the significance of these as global crises

• Two-thirds of illiterate people world-wide are women

• The key to economic growth is the access to QUALITY education AND employment of women and girls

• War always plays out with increased violence toward women and children

• War is expensive, violence toward women/children is not
• Violence towards women/children, as a guerrilla tactic of war, is inexpensive
• a frighteningly effective strategy
• available 24/7

• Corporations have an obligation, responsibility, and accountability to prevent and eliminate the prevalence of Internet Sex Trafficking of women and children

• Craigslist had a multi-million dollar profit from hosting an “adult” section which perpetrated sex trafficking and violence against women – a grassroots protest movement caused Craigslist to eliminate the section

• Prostitution is the “end point” of sex trafficking not the entrance point

• Don’t call it “work” when talking about the sex trade. Women are never “sex workers” – a term that serves to legitimize a reality of oppression, violence, control, and the fear that one has no other choices in life. It also never really provides a viable income for the woman/child.

• We need to work to abolish the sex-tourism trade
• We need to hold the consumer of sex-tourism accountable for criminal acts

• Regarding ecology – there is a direct link between the deforestation of the land and violence against women