Finishing Up CSW58 with Judy

Thursday chapel was the Salvation Army with the band and a wonderful liturgical dancer. I think that there are pictures on the facebook page United Nations Women Adventures. We were all dancing in the aisles and definitely energized for the day.

The morning briefing was done by Jackie Shapiro, the former chair of NGOCSW (nongovernment organization of the Commission on the Status of Women) and Ambassador Gonsalves of El Salvador and Vice Chair of the Commission.
There are 4 resolutions being debated as well as the Agreed Conclusions:
One on Palestine, one on Malawi, one on natural diasters and one on HIV/AIDS. At 10 am tomorrow the Commission will adopt the resolutions and then between 4 and 7 the plan to announce the Agreed Conclusions.
El Salvador has a program and budget to ensure inclusiveness in a public services ie: they use radios to reach out to rural women and have set up sites for "one stop shopping" for services including up to 32 services in one site.
The Ambassador explained that UN Women had held regional meetings prior to the Commission for discussion of the issues in order to make discussions less contentious in New York. He stated that some countries had gone back on the agreements that were made at these regional meetings and were no longer agreeing to previously agreed language and were slowing down negotiations.
The next speaker was the head of Civil society for UN Women. the negotiations on Wednesday went from 11 am to 12:45 am with brief meal breaks. 10 paragraphs were discussed and 60 are left. The Executive Director of UN Women attended as did the Ministers of South Africa and Egypt which helped to speed things up a bit. She described the vice chair as "heroic" in her strong desire to move ahead. However "the crucial issue now is time".
Immediately after the briefing we held a North America/Europe caucus meeting. We discussed the upcoming meetings on women's issues. One member brought up the legalities of some member states not following treaties which they have signed and a discussion ensued on whether the caucus could do anything about this. Finally it was decided to work on the Agreed Conclusions by working with our missions and negotiators and supporting them in any way we can. At the end of the meeting I was honoured to be asked to consider becoming a co-coordinator of the caucus. I asked for time to consider this.
At 4:00pm the core group of the SI (Soroptimist International) met in a hotel room to have an opportunity to visit socially and to discuss the latest reports from the negotiations. I met some pretty awesome women in that group and I really enjoyed working with them.
At 6 pm we had an Ecumenical Women debrief at the Episcopal Church centre. We watched the webinar of Christine Mangale delivering an verbal "intervention" to the Commission as well as a young woman from the Working Group on Girls speaking. We discussed the lastest release from the Commission. The day ended with packing because I am going home tomorrow so that I can go to my daughter's surprise birthday party.
Blessings Judy

St Patrick's Day at UNCSW58 According to Judy

St Patrick's Day is a big deal in New York City. A huge, and I mean huge, parade, everyone in green, green beer etc etc.  I managed to stay clear of the celebrations as getting about was apparently difficult.
It has turned cold again here, warmer than Fenelon but below zero degrees celsius in the morning. I was late to chapel this morning because I could not stop coughing for a bit; got there about 15 minutes late. The Anglican Consultative Council did worship today and the preacher from Africa I think, did a wonderful job talking about maternal child health and MDG (Millennium Development Goal) number 3. My roomie, Caitlin did the prayers of the people and I discovered that she has a wonderful singing voice.
The briefing from the UN this morning was attended again by the Chair of the Commission who spoke at length about procedure. There were no negotiations today, instead the Commission received oral statements from NGOs and negotiated behind closed doors. Another member of the Commission also spoke briefly. This is new to me - usually the briefings are done by UN Women and/or the NGO/CSW NY. This Commission is trying very hard to be more open.
Following the briefing I met with some Soroptimists for a while and then went back to my room for a tea before I headed out to once again make the trek to meet the Canadian negotiators in the UN building - about a 1/2 hour walk for slow, old me. Suzanne was the government rep today and her news was some good and some bad. The good is that a new compilation text is due out today. The bad is that there are some "coalitions:" in the negotiations who are trying to hold a hard line against previously accepted language. The Commission operates on consensus rather than majority and so even one dissenting vote can stop the conclusions.The contentious wording falls in the areas of  "family", "gender", "sexual and reproductive rights and education",
"sovereignty" mostly. Some of this language was accepted back in 1949 and some just last year, but there are strong feelings around these subjects.
At about 3pm the new text came out - only 28 pages this time with 2 paragraphs already accepted (only).
 
Frantically, groups called meetings to review the text because tomorrow is the beginning of the final round of negotiations and it is harder to influence the negotiations from outside the rooms and almost none of us get to go inside. Soroptimists met upstairs in my hotel and other groups too.
At 6:15 there was a North America/Europe caucus meeting that went on for 2 hours. 
More tomorrow
Blessings Judy