EoP at Adoption of the CSW64 Political Declaration

Delivered by Ambassador Jürg Lauber, Permanent Representative of Switzerland

I am delivering this explanation of position on behalf of Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, and my own country Switzerland.

2020 is a pivotal year for the accelerated realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. It marks the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the 10^th anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the 10^th anniversary of UN Women as well as a five-year milestone towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda, including SDG 5 on gender equality.

In the Beijing Declaration we all agreed that “women’s rights are human rights”. We are reassured that the Political Declaration before us reaffirms the Beijing Declaration and acknowledges the human rights of all women and girls. We are also satisfied that it reaffirms the mutually reinforcing relationship between the Beijing Declaration, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as other outcomes and follow ups of other relevant UN conferences and summits. Gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls is a crosscutting issue and indispensable to progress across all the SDGs and targets, and we are glad that this notion is reflected in the Political Declaration.

We value the Declaration’s commitment to tackle existing challenges such as violence against all women and girls as well as the Declaration’s recognition of the importance of the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and girls in different areas, including in conflict prevention and resolution. At the same time, we regret that no agreement could be found to honor this year’s anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Political Declaration.

We furthermore deplore that there was opposition to reference the relevant work done by human rights defenders for the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, despite the fact that their important contributions have been acknowledged in CSW agreed conclusions in previous years.

We furthermore regret that the consensus on the importance of ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights could not be maintained.

Finally, we wish to thank the co-facilitators from Australia, Jo Feldman, and Algeria, Ahlem Charikhi, for their constructive facilitation leading to a solid outcome document.

We regret that the 64^th session of the CSW had to be scaled down and postponed respectively, and the absence of the important voices of civil society organizations with their relevant expertise and experience from the ground is particularly disappointing. At the same time we welcome today’s procedural meeting to ensure the adoption of the Political Declaration which reaffirms our continued commitment to gender equality and hopefully sends a strong signal to all women and girls worldwide.

Political declaration on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women