Each year the United Nations General Assembly high-level week turns New York into a busy chaos, as Heads of States of some 190 nations come to meet each other. This year was special, as the expectations ran high for the 2-day long ‘Summit of the Future‘ to be a priority for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, especially as recent conflicts and wars have weakened multilateralism.

In addition to the bullet-proof limousines blocking 1st and 2nd Avenue, helicopters circling in the skies, and snipers on the UN rooftops, the city was full with participants running around Manhattan for the ‘Climate Week NYC’ with hundreds of parallel events organised by civil society, think-tanks, universities, governments and philanthropic funders.

Action Days for the Future – Beijing+30 

 

In the days prior to the Summit, Action Days were organised, and our international director Sascha Gabizon spoke on behalf of the Women’s Major Group at the high-level panel “Beijing+30: towards a gender equality world”, organised by China, Denmark, France, Kenya, and Mexico, the Women’s Major Group and UN Women.

The event aimed to lay out a strategic vision and galvanize support and engagement across all Member States for implementation of their women’s rights and gender equality commitments such as the Beijing Platform for Action and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Following the presentations by UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous, our WECF Executive Director Sascha Gabizon reminded delegates of the spirit of Beijing:

“A lot has changed since the day I went to Beijing, the 4WWC in 1995, where I was a young activist amongst the 30,000 civil society women in Huairou, It was the most inspiring feminist strategizing event I have ever seen.”  

Read Sascha’s full statement here!  

Ms. Gabizon called on Member States to take urgent action against the growing anti-rights groups that are pushing back progress of the last decades, including against bodily autonomy and LGBTQI+ rights. The room was packed with loud and fierce feminists!

We continued mobilizing towards Beijing+30 at the Global People’s Assembly that same week, where Rebecca Heuvelmans on behalf of WECF urged the wide variety of civil society organisations present to get involved in this crucial process.  

Pact for the Future 

For many long months UN Member States had been negotiating new commitments to strengthen the multilateral system to address the key global crises of our time. The result is the Pact of the Future finally got approved by acclamation in the plenary of the United Nations.

Albeit, not without a following hour full of tension and suspense, which was thankfully ‘saved’ by the Member States of the African Union, who called for a vote to block an addendum proposed at the very last moment by Russia which would have deteriorated the Pact’s entire meaning. After an overwhelming majority of countries voted against the Russian addendum or abstained (including long-time Russian allies, like Cuba) the Pact for the Future was adopted, including the ‘Digital Compact’ and the ‘Declaration on Future Generations’, which had been negotiated in parallel. 

Gender Equality in the Pact 

The Pact for the Future consists of 5 main chapters, on: 

1. Sustainable Development and Financing for Development
2. International Peace and Security 
3. Science, Technology and Innovation and Digital cooperation 
4. Youth and Future Generations 
5. Transforming Global Governance 

In all 5 chapters, there are more or less strong references to the role and rights of women and girls, and the need for greater ambition to reach gender-equality, and end discrimination and gender-based sexual violence. During the long months of negotiations, it was a continuous effort to retain ambition on gender equality and the rights of women and girls. However, in the final version of the PACT, there is no novel, or stronger wording, than that already included in the 2030 Agenda (set 9 years ago), despite the urgent need to accelerate progression on gender equality. Indeed, given that there is now a revised understanding and language of the structural and historic barriers, and intersectional approaches, needed to achieve gender equality, these must be included in international agendas. 

Commission on the Status of Women revitalisation 

The last chapter on Transforming Global Governance (Action 43-d), calls to start an inclusive process for the ‘revitalisation’ of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), in which we as feminist organisations will certainly need to engage. Many ideas are already being proposed around access of civil society feminist organisations to the negotiations by self-organised regional groupings and the rotation of the CSW annual sessions in different UN regions (to avoid the visa problems of the UN HQ) amongst others.

Financing for Sustainable Development – ending the debt crisis 

The Sustainable Development Goals were agreed by all UN Member States in 2015. In addition, the Addis Ababa Action Agreement (AAAA) contributed the commitments needed to finance the implementation of the SDGs and stimulate the transition to an inclusive, peaceful and environmentally sustainable planet. Nevertheless, the SDGS set to be completed by 2030, are not at all on track, notably, SDG5 on gender equality.  

Indeed, worrying trends have emerged in recent, with increasing inequalities within and between countries, a growing debt burden (disproportionally on global South countries, which are barred from investing in social and sustainable measures), as well as a continued lack of international tax coordination (leading to instances of huge tax evasion and more funds going from the South to the North as opposed to visa versa). 

The first draft of the Pact for the Future suggested strong commitments for global cooperation on taxation and financial reform. Unfortunately the final version adopted was very much weakened. Still, the Pact includes a reference to the billionaires tax (now worded as ” Explore options for international cooperation on the taxation of high-net-worth individuals”) and working towards developing a “United Nations framework convention on international tax cooperation”.  

In next year’s Financing for Development Summit, taking place in June 2025 in Sevilla, Spain, we as feminists need to urge Member States to take bold action to address the structural barriers that make it impossible for global South countries to invest in a sustainable care economy due to the unfair financial global structures (ranking agencies, IMF austerity measures etc.). 

Feminist Foreign Policy UNGA event – mixed messages! 

The group of FFP+ countries, including Mexico, organised a high-level event on Feminist Foreign Policy on Wednesday 25th of September, attended by Ministers from Mongolia, Slovenia, Albania, Spain, Chile, Rwanda, France, Canada, Brazil, the Netherlands, Colombia and Australia, as well as Lyric Thompson of FFPC and Hamida Aman, Afghan entrepreneur, journalist, and founder of a free radio for women and girls in Afghanistan.  

Alongside our longstanding allies, such as our partner Trupi Jain from Naireeta Services in India, the Women’s Major Group and the Feminist Foreign Policy Collective, we participated in the high-level FFP event. The focus of the event was to show an increase in the support for Feminist Foreign Policy, with a growing number of global South countries joining the effort to strengthen women’s role and rights in peace and security efforts and sustainable development.

The event included a strong call to stand-up against gender-apartheid in Afghanistan amongst others, which received support even from the newly installed right-conservative government from the Netherlands.

Brazil and Colombia shared exciting and encouraging visions for FFP, calling for racial-equality alongside gender-equality, especially for indigenous peoples and afro-descendent communities, and promoting care-economy models such as the ‘Bolsa-Familia’ social-protection measures focused on women-lead households in Brazil and the ‘Manzanas del Cuidado’ in Colombia. 

France proudly announced their success in enshrining the right to safe and legal abortion (the right to voluntary interruption of pregnancy – IVG) into their constitution (much applauded), and also confirmed that its new government (more conservative than the previous) has committed to continue its Feminist Fund. This would have been the message we would have also wanted to hear from the Netherlands, because whilst we welcome their continued commitment to a FFP and the message that they will continue to partner with civil society and women’s rights organisations, it does stand in stark contrast with the new government’s decision to defund civil society.

Parallel UNGA events – Climate Action and Feminism 

Our team organised, participated and spoke at several other parallel events to the UNGA, including our main event during the Global Peoples Forum.

Our international director Ms. Gabizon spoke on behalf of the Women’s Major Group at an event held by civil society feminists from Azerbaijan, in preparation of the upcoming climate COP29 in Baku. There, she called for stronger support from the Presidency on renewing the Lima Work Programme on Gender, and its Gender Action Plan, which must guide the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Feminist organisations are worried about the COP29 Presidency restricting civil society, especially on such crucial matters as gender equality. Sascha Gabizon also participated in the panel organised by the Feminist Festival organised by the Accelerator for GBV Prevention, speaking on lessons from the 4th World Women’s Conference in Beijing. 

We joined other key events, such as the networking meeting of the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, the German Mission’s event on Feminist Foreign Policy, the She Decides high-level event on abortion rights, the Building Bridges event on phasing-out fossil fuels, the Generation Equality Forum session on climate and gender equality and the New York Times discussion with L’Oreal Foundation on women and climate action. And last but not least, we invited partners, allies and new feminist friends to our 30th-anniversary ecofeminist celebration. 

All in all, the UNGA provided important policy advocacy and networking opportunities.