UN Women convened an Expert Group Meeting in New York City on 25-26 September 2019 in preparation for the sixty-fourth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which will focus on the review and appraisal of progress made in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action over the last 25 years.

Gita Sen, General Co-Coordinator, and Cai Yiping, Executive Committee member of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), were invited to this meeting by the Executive Director of UN Women, to contribute with the expert papers: “The changing landscape of feminist organizing since Beijing” and ‘‘The rise of the South: Implications for women’s rights’’, respectively, and present them in the session titled: “Continuity, change and future prospects”.

In her paper, Yiping, raises critical questions from a gender sense on the “rise of the South” — what is rising, when, why, how, and for whom? What does “rise of the South” mean for women’s rights, especially for the women from South? How could possibly gender perspective be integrated in this process? And how could feminist activism influence and transform the agendas such as South-South and Triangular Cooperation, development finance, etc. and ensure the gender equality and women’s human rights are at the center of development narrative and praxis, including SDGs?

Sen’s paper, on the other hand, reflects on the changing landscape of feminist organizing since Beijing. Building on her previous work (“The SDGs and feminist movement-building” and “Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Feminist Mobilization for the SDGs”), she identifies three key drivers that have shaped the contours and effectiveness of feminist mobilizing in recent years: the socio-economic and political environment; institutions; and the processes of movement building and constructs on that framework, focusing particularly on the changing landscape since the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The paper looks at this period in light of lessons learned from
past and concurrent analysis.

For more information about this meeting and to access to all papers, please visit: https://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw64-2020/preparations/expert-group-meeting