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SOGI, climate change, and feminist organizations featured in discussions

The Asian and Pacific Conference on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: Beijing+20 Review in Bangkok began today. Governments from the Asia and Pacific will listen to issues related to women equality and the empowerment of women for the next four days. At the end of the Conference, States' pledges and priority areas for investment for the next five years will be included in a final ministerial declaration that will also serve as the regional input into the global review process dialogue to be held in 2015 at the 59th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW).

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Statement delivered by Eni Lestari Andayani Adi at the Asian and Pacific Conference on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: Beijing+20 Review
November 17, 2014

When I was born I shared hopes and dreams like many of you here. I wanted to study, to go to university, to contribute to our society, to achieve my full potential.

Two years after you signed off on the Beijing Declaration Indonesia and many of our countries faced the Asian Financial Crisis. International financial institutions forced neo-liberal policies and our governments complied. As a result my family, like so many, lost our land, our small business, our means of survival. I could no longer go to school, dream, I had to survive. I became a migrant domestic worker. My story there is like so many – forced into debt to migrate, controlled by migration agencies, forced to live with employers, unpaid wages, abuse. Yet I survived and worked with others to collectively demand domestic work be recognized as work and that we reverse the conditions that force us to migrate.

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Women's recommendations should be turned into government action

apcsob2020141116bThe Beijing+20 CSO Forum bringing together over 400 feminist women activists working on women's rights in the Asia and Pacific region ended today. The Forum concluded with an outcome document adopted by consensus containing recommendations to the governments that will meet November 17-20 in the Asian and Pacific Conference on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: Beijing+20 Review.

Women highlighted the need for governments to provide information and to guarantee consultation processes with women's organizations as means for accountability. They reiterated that States should guarantee the participation of women in political spaces, particularly of those women traditionally marginalized. Women also expressed the importance of engaging with regional mechanisms to advance women's human rights in the region.