Article: United Nations Commission on the Status of Women fails to uphold women’s human rights

Published: Thursday, March 29, 2012

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meets every year for two weeks to review progress on implementation of the Fourth World Conference on Women's Beijing Platform for Action adopted in 1995. The theme of this year's review was "The Empowerment of Rural Women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges." Other resolutions debated by the Commission included "Eliminating Maternal Mortality and Morbidity through the Empowerment of Women" and "Women and Girls and HIV/AIDS".

This year marked the first time in history that the CSW did not produced "Agreed Conclusions" (the closest they ever came was in 2006 on Violence against Women but an agreement was reached the following week). The most contentious issues, not surprisingly, were related to women's access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care, including family planning, control over their sexuality and protection of their reproductive rights, comprehensive sexuality education, and eliminating harmful practices such as early and forced marriage, including child marriage.

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