The theme of this year's CSW is Financing for Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality. There are dozens and dozens of NGO's here with ideas about how to demand the resources and there are daily sessions sponsored by the UN missions, but with only two days to go I haven't found anyone who is optimistic that this year's CSW will have the slightest impact on women's empowerment.
What I do know is that Unifem, has launched an on-line and print campaign ‘Say NO to Violence against Women' asking people to sign up, promising that for every signature $1 - yes $1 - will go towards ending violence against women and that the United Nations Foundation will donate $100,000 to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women for the first 100,000 signatures collected. If I understand correctly, this is a fund (Unifem) asking the public to raise one dollar at a time in order that another funder, (The United Nations Foundation) will donate money to another fund (the UN Trust to End Violence against Women)....
It has taken Unifem fifteen years of tireless campaigning to persuade the UN that violence against women is not a private matter: that it is a matter of fundamental human rights. Yet the new multi agency 7 year campaign to end violence against women launched by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last week has no new money behind it. No wonder that Unifem, which never gives up, is reduced to collecting the dollars one by one. The United Nations exists to defend all our human rights. It's high time it took women's human rights seriously.