The Working Group on Girls Side Events for CSW

 Commission on the Status of Women to Focus on the Girl Child

This year the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), meeting in New York,February 26 to March 9, will focus on an issue that has long been of concern to The Working Group on Girls and the International Network for Girls -discrimination against the girl child.

The history of girls shows that many girls have been denied education, refused health care, subjected to female genital mutilation, and exploited both sexually and economically for far too long. It is time for governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to end the discrimination and violence against girls that begins at birth and continues through to adulthood.

The Working Group on Girls hopes that the Commission on the Status of Women will help to correct the many problems faced by girls and help them to obtain their rights and achieve their potential. Further, it is hoped that laws will be enacted and enforced that will protect girls.  The Working Group also hopes that girls will have greater visibility on the international stage as a result of this commission meeting. Finally, it is hoped that for the girls attending the Commission, their participation in New York will encourage their greater participation in policy development when they return home.

On International Women's Day in 2006, Secretary General Kofi Annan said, "The world is starting to grasp that their is no policy more effective in promoting development, health and education than the empowerment of women and girls." The Working group on Girls hopes that the empowerment of girls will not only begin to be grasped but will be embraced by all the member states of the United Nations.

The Working Group on Girls (WGG) is planning a number of activities in preparation for the CSW and will be very active at the 2007 CSW meeting. They are encouraging girls around the world to make their voices heard — at preparatory meetings, in on-line discussions, and as delegates to the Commission meeting. They hope to identify gaps in the implementation of promises made, to share lessons learned from successful policies and programs, and to make recommendations to the Commission that will lead to a strong outcome document.

CSW Roundtables

Roundtable 1, Discrimination against the Girl Child on February 15, 2007, 1:15-2:30 p.m. United Nations Conference Room 3 Roundtable 2, Violence against the Girl Child on February 20, 2007, 1:15-2:30 p.m. United Nations Conference Room 3.
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Mary Purcell Grantees Coming to UN
Ten teenage girls - sponsored by seven different international NGOs - will be participating in  CSW51.  Coming from Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, India, Mozambique, Peru, Portugal, South Africa, Togo and Uganda,  a "Mary Purcell travel grant" of $1,000 per girl will go to each  sponsoring organization.  It is appropriate that their voices will be honoring the first chairperson of the Working Group on Girls, Mary Purcell.
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Some information on other events we are planning follows:

Don't forget the caucus meetings "for girls only" we will hold on Monday, February 26 in the UN Conference Room B from 3:00 to 4:00 PM and on Monday, March 5 in the UN Conference Room B from 3:00 to 4:00 PM.

 Working Group on Girls Organizations and other delegates to the CSW, should consider including girls in their delegation. Leaders of the world need to hear girls’ voices.  If you will be including girls in your delegation, please notify the Working Group on Girls. Please also watch for our side events both for and about girls.
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Some Talking Points for the CSW Meeting

Now is the time to recognize the human dignity and worth of the girl child and to ensure the full enjoyment of her human rights and fundamental freedoms . . .  Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Global Framework, #39

The NGO Working Group on Girls urges and encourages the Commission on the Status of Women to call upon member states to:

•  Recall the principles of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
•  Recommit themselves to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, especially as they address gender equality and the special needs of girls.
•  Redirect their resources to the fulfillment of the goals set forth in Section L of the Beijing Platform for Action
•  Ratify and implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and their Optional Protocols
•  Recommend that both the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women require signatories to explicitly address the situation of girls in their reports

We concur with the conclusions of the Report of the Secretary-General on the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child (E/CN.6/2007/2) that

•  Discrimination and violence against the girl child persist in all parts of the world;
•  The girl child does not receive sufficient explicit attention in policy and programme development and resource allocations

We urge the members of the Commission on the Status of Women to outline polices and strategies which

•  Increase the visibility of girls by including their voices and experiences in policy and programme development
•  Create space for dialogue and participation of girls in development of strategies to end discrimination and violence
•  Include those girls most often neglected and those most often excluded because of tradition, or other economic, social and cultural barriers
•  Increase resources and funding which target programmes for girls
•  Mandate the collection of data desegregated by age and sex
•  Ensure that girls are educated about their rights and responsibilities
•  Raise awareness of the rights of the girl child among men and boys
•  End impunity for violations of human rights and gender-based violence, especially those directed against girls
•  State time limits and verifiable benchmarks

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Make Girls Visible!

Below are some useful documents.To see the first three documents, click here and find the particular one.

For  Secretary General Kofi Annan's report on "The elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child." choose document E/CN.6/2007/2 in the language of your choice. Arabic, Chinese, French, Russia, or Spanish  

For the draft agenda for the official meetings of the CSW is document number E/CN.6/2007/1. For the WGG statement for the CSW look for document number E/CN.6/2007/NGO34.

A Calendar of Parallel Events organized by UN Missions, UN Entities and Inter-Governmental Organizations can be found here.

A calendar of NGO side events can be found here.  Also, for additional information on participation in CSW 2006, see NGO Participation in CSW

 The Beijing Platform for Action recognized that discrimination and violence against girls begins at the earliest stages of life and continues unabated. Girls often have less access to nutrition, physical and mental health care, and education and enjoy fewer rights, opportunities, and benefits of childhood and adolescence than boys.  In addition, they are often subjected to various forms of violence and exploitation.

 The Beijing Platform for Actionalso set forth steps to be taken to improve the lives of girls. This was the beginning of the recognition of the needs and rights of girls

 The needs and concerns of the girl child were firmly placed on the international agenda by the 1990 Declaration of the World Summit for Children which gave priority to the girl child’s survival, development, and protection. They have been by repeated and addressed by meetings of numerous international bodies since.

 Girls’ rights are protected by international law. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) contain mutually reinforcing principles to ensure protection and fulfillment of the rights of girls and to end gender-based discrimination.

 Progress has been made by many countries, in particular in the recognition of girls human rights and in increasing girls’ access to primary education. However, further efforts are needed to ensure equal access to secondary education and to job opportunities, to eradicate sex work by children, to ensure reintegration of the girl child after armed conflicts, and to improve collection of data on the situation of girls.

Click here to see our new Fact Sheets.

The Girl Child Today

Girls—their rights and their concerns—will be the focus of the 2007 meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).  The Working Group on Girls wants to ensure that girls everywhere have a chance to participate in the discussion.

We are working with UNICEF through their Voices of Youth on-line forum to gather the voices of young people and to prepare a “Youth Report” to be presented at the CSW meeting.

The forum, Stop discrimination and violence against girls,” will be open from December 1 to January 15 and details will be available on UNICEF’s Voices of Youth.. 

In preparation for the forum we have prepared an educational newsletter, The Girl Child Today, which can be used in the classroom, with gatherings of young people, and by interested individuals.  It includes basic information about the CSW, as well as relevant background information and the stories of several girls who have experienced violence and discrimination in their lives.  This information will be a key element in preparation for the UNICEF Forum and the CSW meeting itself.

We hope you will share this information with your own NGO and other interested people and encourage them to participate in the Voices of Youth Forum — “Stop discrimination and violence against girls.”    

Please also see our Call to Action: Stop Discrimination and Violence Against Girls.

This article summarizes the CSW meeting held in late February and March 2006, from the point of view of the Working Group on Girls (WGG).

The Caucuses

The WGG held four caucuses during the CSW.  The attendees overflowed the room and included NGOs representing countries worldwide, representatives from UNICEF as well as a schoolteacher who brought girls to the CSW and to our caucus meetings.

At the first caucus, the participants analyzed the draft documents and worked together to come up with suggested wording to insure that the needs of girls would be included in the final documents. We found that the draft documents (to be used as a starting point for the CSW meeting) issued by the CSW Bureau shortly before the meeting, lacked any significant mention of girls. This seemed to be a step backward. In recent years we had been pleased with the attention being paid to girls in other UN documents. (See further analysis below.)

Attendees volunteered to talk with delegates about girls’ issues, show them the suggested wording, and report back at the next WGG caucus about their interaction with the delegates. Some of the delegations they approached included the UK , US, Australia , South Africa , Spain , Indonesia , France , Switzerland , Mexico , Germany and Brazil . In addition to the importance of this lobbying effort to promote meeting the needs of girls in the documents, this was an important action both to help girls in their home country, and to inform the countries about the work of the caucus on girls.

Attendees also commented that both girls’ issues and the attendance of girls at the CSW were crucial to what would happen at the CSW in March 2007. It was agreed to make every effort to ensure more girls would attend next year when the priority theme will be “The elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child."

It also was agreed that we all need to be more engaged early on. If possible, we will try to gain access to the documents for the next CSW earlier in the process, to help us to know what we need to do at the next meeting to advance girls’ status.

Some of the other topics raised in the caucuses were: best practices should be collected; men and boys should be informed about girls’ issues so they can become partners; and girls should be trained to be active politically so that they will be a voice in their country for their own issues. NGOs should build bridges to their government to address the needs of girls, and help to provide other NGOs with the necessary information to help them do their work.

Accessibility to water and the lack of water was stressed as one of the biggest obstacles to girl’s education. Adolescent health, negative cultural influences, mentoring girls, having workshops for young people at the next CSW on confidence building were all part of the focused discussions in the WGG caucuses.

The CSW Outcome Documents

Some information on the official documents that were the main focus of work of the Commission follows.[1]

Botswana presented a document entitled "Women, the girl child and HIV/AIDS." This document spells out the problems that are relevant to the girl child and this epidemic. Botswana and the countries that worked with Botswana in drafting this document are to be congratulated.[2]

The original draft document presented at the beginning of the CSW meeting

"Equal participation of women and men in decision-making processes at all levels"contained no references to girls at all. The final outcome document contained eleven references to girls, but always paired with women, never addressing the unique situation of girls.[3]

In the document "Enhanced participation of women in development: An enabling environment for achieving gender equality and the advancement of women, taking into account, inter alia, the fields of education, health and work" some changes were added.[4]

The original draft document only mentioned girls four times. Two of those instances were in the education section where "girls and women" were mentioned, once in regard to preventing violence and harassment and once in regard to education and training in science and technology. The document also referred once to boys and girls, in reference to preventing gender bias in curricula. Girls were also mentioned once in the section on work referring to increased opportunities for women and girls to work in non-traditional sectors.

The final outcome document mentioned girls thirteen times, but always in the phrase "women and girls," never addressing the unique needs or problems of girls. Still, it was progress to have the delegates recognize that girls should be included in planning. (It is impossible to do a simple comparison of the two documents, the original draft and the final outcome document, since the original was four pages and the final is seven pages.)

This is not to imply that only counting the occurrences of the mention of girls is meaningful. In fact, the places and ways in which girls were mentioned in the final documents were important and meaningful and we were proud that we contributed to the improved outcome documents.

This year, as in past years, WGG will have an official statement, distributed as an official UN document. 
(The number and link will be supplied when the UN makes it available.)

WGG will also be holding caucus meetings and workshops again this year. Our workshop schedule follows:

• MONDAY  MARCH 7, 2005,   3:00 to 4:30  Young Women Speak Out on the second floor of the UN Church Center
• TUESDAY MARCH 8, 2005, 11:30 to 1:00  Girls Speak Out on the 11th floor of the Church of the Church Center in the Hardin Room

For more information the CSW seeCSW Information.

For the complete side event schedule see side events.