An objective piece on NGO participation or lack of it in CSW 57.  Read More   Good Shepherd as an NGO had two passes – and while they permit one to enter the corridors of the UN they do not gain access to the negotiating room.  NGO access is had by being a member of a national delegation.   I did have a meeting with a member of the Irish Mission who was negotiating on behalf of women human right defenders.  This is retained in the document.  Well done!   Throughout the two weeks I sent on two separate occasions e-mails containing language with regard to Human Trafficking and Prostitution to 15 member states of the Commission.  In the final document you will note that the paragraphs on Human Trafficking are strong  but all reference to prostitution  has disappeared … thus permitting prostitution to continue and not naming it for what it is sexual exploitation and violence towards women and girls.  Yes there is agreement around the violence of Human Trafficking but no agreement around Prostitution.

A quote from  the link above and I quote it because I have heard these stories too…

“The women delegates of, for example, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iran may declare unchallenged, in the UN building, that their governments respect women’s status and progress, is being made. But we, in our restricted place across the road, listen in grief and pity to accounts of rape, sexual slavery, be headings of women activists and human rights defenders; of women imprisoned for fleeing forced marriage, of widow abuse, and of honour killings disguised as suicide. And of young women activists stripped and sexually assaulted in Tahir Square, Cairo. Of what is really happening to the women of Libya and Syria. Rape may be a weapon of war, but women’s bodies are being targeted in many countries, post conflict, and during revolution, and where there is no war. …  As member States pontificate, many mouthing platitudes, women and girls are dying, or if not dead, destroyed.”