Inter-Parliamentary Union - British Group - Parliamentary Meeting on the occasion of the 52nd Session of the Commission of the Status of Women, New York, 27 February 2008


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Delegation Reports

Parliamentary meeting on the occasion of the 52nd Session of the Commission of the Status of Women, UN Headquarters, New York, 27 February 2008

Delegation

Rt Hon Hilary Armstrong MP
Eleanor Laing MP

The Commission is an annual event which attracts a large number of NGO’s from around the world, and at which governments are held to account for their progress on the Beijing agenda.
The Ambassador at the British mission, hosted a reception for those attending the CSW which was an opportunity to meet others attending the Commission. The mission staff were helpful throughout the week, including hosting a session for the parliamentarians at the event for a comprehensive briefing on issues more generally at the UN.
The priority theme for the CSW was Financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women, and the IPU and UN Division for the Advancement of Women(UNDAW) organised a parliamentary event entitled: The role of parliament in financing for gender equality. The day was split in two, with the morning session concentrating on parliament’s role in maximising national wealth in favour of women and gender equality, and in the afternoon, financing gender equality in politics. There were in the region of 50 countries present.
The day was chaired by Ms Monica Xavier, Senator from Uruguay, and President of the IPU Co-ordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians. The first speaker was Gertrude Mangela, from Tanzania, President of the Pan-African Parliament; she had also chaired the Beijing meeting. She talked about the improvement in political representation there had been since Beijing, but that that was not necessarily reflected in the economic sphere, and challenged us to think about how we had used political advancement for women to improve economic equality for women in our countries.
Simel Esim from the ILO then spoke about the Financing for Development programme, and the need to use gender budgeting as a tool to ensure that economic decisions take better account of the needs of women. She outlined a range of strategies to be considered into future international negotiations.
Lyde Err from the EU and a member of the Council of Europe, and Winnie Byayima who had been a member of the Ugandan parliament and is now the Director of the UNDP, spoke about gender sensitive budgeting.
Lyde Err said this form of budgeting was a matter of political will, technical knowledge and resources. Winnie Byayima emphasised that gender budgeting was not about a separate budget for women, but the means of examining budgets to see the differential effects on men and women, and then identify gaps and raise policy issues accordingly. This then allows parliamentarians to hold governments accountable.
She described how she and others had used this in Uganda by analysing the position of women with civil society organisations, academics and parliamentary colleagues, assessing policy documents that come with the budget to assess the impact on men and women, not just people generally, then making sure that policy distinctions are addressed in the budget. She then gave some very graphic examples from her own constituency!
In the afternoon, we looked at the financing of gender equality in politics, and financing women’s participation in politics. This was an opportunity to hear the experiences of women from different countries in trying to get involved in their political systems. It was clear that there needed to be some measure of positive action for women to really make progress.
The closing session was with a speaker from South Africa, Ms P Govender who was an MP from 1994-2002, and Caroline Hannam, who is Director of the Division of the Promotion of Women at the UN.
Ms Govender spoke about her experience as a new ANC member and the work she did from a committee basis to look at the budget process and content to seek to ensure positive effects for women.
Ms Hannan launched the map that was produced jointly by the UN and the IPU illustrating the numbers of women in parliaments around the world, and the numbers of women in governments. She also highlighted that their research showed that there was very little attention given to costing inequality, and emphasised that the work of the Commission on the status of women was only as good as work on the ground. She also drew attention to the Secretary General’s campaign for 2008-2015 against the violence of women.
The next day there was joint IPU and UNIFEM ‘side event’ on Political Accountability to women: the Role of Women in Politics. The panel discussed the conditions under which women in politics have been able to improve public accountability to women and to represent effectively and defend women’s needs and interests. There was then a lively discussion.
Hilary Armstrong was then asked to be part of the press conference where the IPU and UN presented the map to the media.