Thursday March 20

OK It is really monday but I will try to catch up in sequence.


Thurs 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 andere slowing down negotiations.

The next speaker was the head of Civil society for UN Women. the negotiations on Wed 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 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 cordinator 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 Anglican youth also 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