Strategic discussionsThe Women and ESCR Working Group organized two calls focused on key action areas—with interpretation into Spanish, French, Arabic and English—as part of our annual working group evaluation and planning processes. Session 1, on November 20, 2017, discussed Women and Land. We would like to thank the participants, and we will continue sending information about the next steps of this process. Please confirm your participation in SESSION 2 about Women and Work, on December 11, 2017, 9:00-10:00am (NY time) by filling out this online form. Women’s Rights to Land and Natural ResourcesPlanning for strategy meetings at CSW 2018The Women and ESCR Working Group is organizing events at CSW in 2018 in relation to the theme of rural women, based on our collective work on housing, land and natural resources. The deadline for submitting proposals to the parallel forum is December 15. In September, some members, including Instituto de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir - ILSB (Mexico) and the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development - APWLD (Thailand), participated in an Expert Group Meeting in Rome to prepare a report that will inform CSW discussions. It was an important opportunity for ESCR-Net members to influence the debate according to our collective analysis. The expert paper, Rural women and empowerment within the context of the new exploitative realities in Latin America, by Chris Mendoza (ILSB) presents contemporary issues facing rural territories in Latin America and their effects on women, as well as movements empowering rural women to address these challenges.
Feminists for a Binding Treaty (F4T)Members of the Women and ESCR Working Group have been collaborating with members of the Corporate Accountability Working Group to advocate for a strong UN treaty on human rights and business, responsive to the different and disproportionate impacts of corporate violations on women. Earlier in the year, this led to these members creating an informal collaboration entitled Feminists for a Binding Treaty or F4T, which has taken a lead in shaping one of three key advocacy positions for ESCR-Net in ongoing negotiations of the UN Open-ended Inter-Governmental Working Group tasked with drafting the treaty, as well as organizing a side event during its October meeting in Geneva. This group, including Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), Centro De Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), Conectas Direitos Humanos, Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW Asia Pacific) and Project on Organizing, Development, Education, and Research (PODER), is helping to think through events at the upcoming CSW, as well as supporting fellow members to engage with their governments to push a strong feminist approach to corporate accountability.
Women’s rights movement in the Asia Pacific regionFrom 6-9 September, several members of ESCR-Net participated in the the Asia-Pacific Feminist Forum (APFF) organized by APWLD in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with more than 300 activists from across the region. ESCR-Net coordinated two workshops with members. In the first workshop, Considering Women’s Rights in Relation to Housing, Land and Natural Resources the debate was framed by contributions from Pauline Vata from Hakijamii (Kenya), Niki Gamara from Defend Job (Philippines) Noraeri Thungmueangthong from Indigneous Womens Network (Thailand), a member of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, in addition to remarks by Shobha Shukla from Citizen News Service (India), Ravadee Prasertcharoensuk from Sustainable Development Foundation (Thailand) and Chanda Thapa from Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (Nepal). The second workshop on Security and Wellbeing for Women Human Rights Defenders was framed by comments of Chanchana Chakma of the Bangladesh Indigenous Women’s Network (Bangladesh), a member of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, Niki Gamara from Defend Job (Philippines) and Chanda Thapa from the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact. Consultation on a draft UN General Comment on access to land and ESCROn October 19 - 20, ESCR-Net members FIAN Brazil, Tebtebba, Ogiek Peoples Development Program, and the National Fisheries Solidarity Organization (NAFSO) participated in a consultation on a draft General Comment (GC) of the UN Committee on ESCR (CESCR) on access to land, at Columbia University in New York. ESCR-Net’s engagement in this process presents an opportunity for the Women and ESCR Working Group to offer inputs from a feminist perspective.
Women and WorkIn March 2017, the Women and ESCR Working Group organized three events at CSW related to women and work: an official event inside the UN co-hosted by Finland, an external workshop for fellow advocates and a strategy meeting of members. The strategy meeting was a key moment to build our collective analysis, which resulted in an outcome document outlining openings and potential priorities for joint action. This was circulated in July, to the full working group for review and to support ongoing discussions and action. In the past couple months, members of our working group joined the Strategic Litigation Working Group in submitting a third party intervention case before the UN Committee on ESCR involving unpaid care work, social security and indirect as well as intersectional discrimination in Ecuador. Members involved included: AI (UK), ACIJ (Argentina), CESR (US), FOCO (Argentina), GI-ESCR (US), Hakijamii (Kenya), IWRAW-AP (Malaysia), LRC (South Africa), SRAC (Canada), Professor Lilian Chenwi (South Africa) and Viviana Osorio Pérez (Colombia). Next steps: In order to build on initial discussions and the related outcome document, we have scheduled a strategy call on Women and Work on December 11, from 9-10am (NY time) as noted above. Please RSVP in this link by December 4, indicating your language preference:
Cross-Cutting Issues: Operationalizing a feminist intersectional approachThe WESCR WG has started a process to continue building common language and to identify and/or develop tools in line with our network-wide objective, to: “Operationalize an intersectional approach in practice, foregrounding gender analysis and guided by communities confronting overlapping forms of oppression, exploitation and dispossession.” Building on their initial discussion, the Steering Committee circulated an initial email, including questions for the working group to consider, as well as questions that we would like to raise with other working groups.
Governance UpdateThe WESCR WG Steering Committee has been holding regular meetings on the first Wednesday of every month, beginning in September. The Steering Committee has discussed planning and evaluation processes—including the upcoming working group calls on land and work—and how to support the working group in contributing to network-wide objectives, foremost operationalizing a feminist intersectional approach. The Steering Committee includes: Dalia Abd El-Hameed (Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Egypt), Judit Geller (European Roma Rights Center, Hungary), Mayra Gomez (Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, United States), Ida LeBlanc (NUDE, Trinidad and Tobago), Charlene May (Individual Member, South Africa), and Shanti Uprety (IWRAW-AP, Malaysia). The Women and ESCR Working Group has advanced substantive equality at the intersection of women’s rights and economic, social and cultural rights. Through engagement with UN bodies, capacity building and advocacy, it is collectively striving to ensure women’s experiences and analyses are at the center of domestic and international policy-making and legal developments.
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