UN: Challenges of a virtual CSW
At the international level, a key opportunity to review progress and push for more should have come at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the principal annual global forum on gender equality. But a week before the session was due to begin, the emerging pandemic prompted the organisers to amend the CSW’s format and duration, and the planned two-week event with its approximately 12,000 confirmed participants was scaled back to a one-day procedural meeting on 9 March to adopt a draft political declaration marking the anniversary the Beijing Declaration.
Women activists experienced first-hand the deepening of pre-existing inequalities in access and voice caused by the pandemic.
Across the world, women activists are tired, isolated, burnt out, hungry and stressed; all while still doing the work of imagining new futures.
We are tired, but must take turns to rest.
Masana Ndinga-Kanga
