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The Trump administration hardly got a mention in scores of public speeches by foreign delegations at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, or CSW, at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.
But Washington was on everyone’s mind, reflecting heightened anxiety that it is not only rolling back the rights of women and other historically discriminated groups, but dismantling the entire multilateral system.
There was some relief that the U.S. delegation did not torpedo the adoption of a political declaration reaffirming the Beijing Declaration and Plan of Action, the 30-year-old landmark blueprint for advancing women’s equality and rights. And on Friday, the delegates overcame reservations by Washington’s ally, Argentina, to adopt a program of priorities to advance the cause of women over the coming years.
But Washington sent a strong signal that it plans to leverage its financial and diplomatic muscle to reverse a range of progressive U.N. policies, from access to sexual and reproductive health and rights to quotas tailored to achieve gender parity in U.N. institutions.
In a farewell statement, Jonathan Shrier, acting U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, sharply criticized the political declaration, saying it lacked clear language recognizing “women are biologically female and men are biologically male.”
He took aim at a provision of the declaration’s recognition of a right to global development, attacked government regulation of online content as suppressing free speech, and denounced the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
“We will no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course,” Shrier said. He also raised concern about references to climate change before his microphone was silenced for surpassing the allotted speaking time.
While several delegations expressed frustration that the final declaration made no explicit mention of women's sexual reproductive health and rights, they appeared relieved that the U.S. had not blown up the entire process.
“It’s been a weird CSW,” said Ishaan Shah, a U.K.-based advocate with the Young Feminist Caucus. “People are not really addressing the elephants in the room. …There is definitely this undertone of depleted funding, lack of resourcing, and growing anti-rights, anti-gender movement,” he added. “I think it’s been quite somber in that sense.”
Scoop: US pokes globalism in eye in women's rights talks at UN
Bait and switch
The campaign for the 10th U.N. secretary-general is likely to pick up steam this year, and a coalition of governments and former female politicians and diplomats are pressing for U.N. member states to select a woman for the first time.
In the meantime, the role of U.N. General Assembly president needs to be filled, and Germany — which has a lock on the post because of an informal rotation system — delivered for advocates, but in the messiest way possible.
Until this week, Germany had been backing Helga Schmid, the former secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Co-operation and Security, as its nominee for president of the U.N. General Assembly. The German mission to the United Nations even promoted Schmid’s candidacy in a March 11 post about a CSW side event on its X account.
But then Germany dumped Schmid in favor of former German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock to be head of the world’s most representative political body. Despite the switch, if Baerbock is elected, it would still only be the fifth time in the U.N.’s 80-year history that a woman has held the post.
Opinion: All the UN secretary-general’s men — and why this must change
So many meetings
Since the opening of CSW, the U.N. secretariat recorded 13,000 people, including U.N. staff, delegates, and civil society advocates, entering the building. The 11-day session — from March 10 to March 21 — drew the largest number of civil society members ever, at 5,845, to a CSW event at U.N. headquarters. The next highest was in 2019 when 5,232 attended.
This being a U.N. conference, there were meetings. Lots of meetings.
A scroll through the list of side events was enough to strain one’s vision, including titles like “Ending Child Marriage,” “Saving Lives in Haiti,” “Gender Equality in the West Balkans,” “Fashion as a Means of Empowerment,” “Making the Agrifood System Work Better for Women and Girls,” and the “Rise of Family Values & Strategies for Rights-based Family Law Reform.” Altogether, there were nearly 1,000 meetings along the margins of the governmental negotiations on political declarations, including 230 official side events hosted by member states and U.N. agencies, and some 700 parallel meetings organized by nongovernmental organizations, according to a spokesperson for UN Women.
Reality check
The case for women’s rights at these meeting-filled U.N. conferences can seem a bit abstract, in endless debates over the meaning of gender responsiveness and multiple intersecting forms of discrimination. But underlying the rhetoric of women’s rights is an increasingly harsh reality, heightened by unprecedented U.S. foreign aid cuts and ongoing conflicts from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Gaza and Ukraine.
In Ukraine, U.S. foreign aid cuts have “severely disrupted” 72% of women-led groups relying on U.S. funding, threatening support for women's rights, political participation, and conflict-related sexual violence victims, according to a UN Women survey. In Yemen, nearly 1 million women are losing access to reproductive health services, according to figures compiled by the U.N. Population Fund. And in Ethiopia, 190,000 people, including 134,000 refugees, will lose access to sexual reproductive health and gender-based violence services.
The resumption of Israel’s offensive in Gaza brought it home. During the ceasefire, UNFPA, and its partners resumed basic health services for thousands of women. Those gains are at risk of evaporating. “A lack of electricity and fuel has disabled hospital operations, and life-saving maternal health medicines have run out, again — particularly dangerous for the one in two pregnant women in Gaza who face a high-risk pregnancy,” UNFPA said in a statement on Thursday. “Portable incubators, ultrasound devices, and oxygen pumps, among other essential equipment, are now stalled at the border.”
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‘Cigar and whisky club’
The role of women in peacemaking was a hot topic at the women’s conference, which included a special side meeting on the topic.
A young Norwegian diplomat, Anne Melangen Havn, highlighted how little progress has been made globally in putting women at the peace table, saying only 10% of peace negotiators are women.
Having worked on a number of peace processes, Havn recalled routinely encountering what she calls the “cigar and whisky club: it’s like a group of men, sitting in a group, discussing.”
Women, she said, are often excluded from peace talks, and even when they are included, they are not let into the room for most sensitive discussions on ceasefires and security arrangements, on the grounds that women don’t have the experience, knowledge, and capacity. But these women, she said, had “much more political experience, technical experience than many of the men that were in the room.”
Havn said the landmark U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for expanding the role of women in the peace and security field, offers a valuable blueprint for advancing women’s participation. But in recent closed-door negotiations on a peacekeeping agreement with countries that contribute troops to U.N. peacekeeping missions, the U.S. delegation sought to remove language reiterating support for that resolution.
Scoop: Trump admin opposes UN commitment to broaden women's peace role
Dimmed star power
It wouldn’t be a proper U.N. conference without a few celebrities, but the ranks of high-profile stars was thinner than usual. Hillary Clinton — who captured the spirit of the international women’s rights movement by pronouncing “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights” at Beijing in 1995 — did not attend its 30th anniversary conference.
UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Millie Bobby Brown, the British actress who gained fame in the series “Stranger Things,” headlined an event promoting girls' empowerment. She urged the assembled dignitaries and activists to “do more, fund programs that protect girls from violence, ensure that every girl, no matter where she is born, can go to school and complete her education, give girls access to healthcare, to digital technology, to economic opportunities, and most importantly listen to their voices.”
Actor, entrepreneur, and part owner of a British soccer club Ryan Reynolds was also spotted on the U.N. campus during CSW, though his appearance had nothing to do with women’s rights. He was attending an event about sports and the U.N.
Maybe Bachelet
There was also a shortage of current and former world leaders, with the notable exception of Iceland’s President Halla Tómasdóttir, who spoke at a side event titled “Women Rise for All: Turning Hope into Action,” hosted by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed.
Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet attended the session, presiding at a ceremony unveiling a commemorative U.N. stamp that promotes greater equality for women on the 30th anniversary of the Beijing conference.
She also hinted she may take a stab at the race for a new secretary-general. As a former head of state, Bachelet already enjoys broad name recognition and she has plenty of U.N. experience, having served a term as U.N. high commissioner for human rights. But she is likely to face an uphill battle winning over the Trump administration. During Trump’s first term, the U.S. unsuccessfully tried to torpedo her bid to become the top U.N. rights official, citing her criticism of Israel and her views on abortion.
Meanwhile, the Gambian activist and regional UN Women ambassador for Africa, Jaha Dukureh, brought her campaign against female genital mutilation and child marriage to New York.
“I stand before you as a survivor of a system that told me my worth was tied to my silence, my obedience, and my ability to endure, to endure female genital mutilation, to endure going from one marriage to the next when I was still a child,” she said on International Women’s Day at the U.N. General Assembly hall. “But I did not just endure and survive. I resisted. I fought for my freedom, for my daughter’s freedom, and for the freedom of all women and girls who deserve more than to survive.”
Read: Is the world ready for a woman at helm of the United Nations?
Back to the past
Circling back to the U.S., it has mounted a full-court offensive against gender and diversity, characterizing it as an insidious effort to promote trans lifestyles and undermine the rights of women.
“The United States government will no longer promote radical ideologies that replace women with men in spaces and opportunities designed for women. Nor will it devastate families by indoctrinating our sons and daughters to begin wars with their own bodies — or each other,” Shrier said on March 14.
“In defending Americans from unhealthy and extremist gender ideology, President Trump has made clear we will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male,” he said in the U.S. address to CSW.
The U.S. rejoined the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a conservative manifesto adopted by 39 socially conservative countries, including Belarus, Hungary, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The declaration — which was adopted during the first Trump administration — asserts that abortion should never be promoted as a method of family planning, and the nuclear family is the “natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the family and the State.”
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Background reading: Inside the global anti-abortion coalition preparing for Trump’s return
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About the author
Colum Lynch
Colum Lynch is an award-winning reporter and Senior Global Reporter for Devex. He covers the intersection of development, diplomacy, and humanitarian relief at the United Nations and beyond. Prior to Devex, Colum reported on foreign policy and national security for Foreign Policy Magazine and the Washington Post. Colum was awarded the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital reporting for his blog Turtle Bay. He has also won an award for groundbreaking reporting on the U.N.’s failure to protect civilians in Darfur.
