47th Session, New York 2003: UN CSW urges high participation of women at the World Summit on the Information Society but fails to adopt agreed conclusions on human rights and violence against women.

• Author: Cabrera-Balleza, Mavic
• Position: United Nations Commission On The Status Of Women

Following intense debates and negotiations, the 47th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women held in March 2003 in New York, adopted by consensus its draft agreed conclusions on one of the two themes of its current session--women's access to the media and information and communication technologies. It deferred, conclusions for its second theme, violence against women, until a later date.

Under the agreed conclusions, the Commission agreed that increasing women's access to and participation in the media and ICSs was vital for women's empowerment. It urged governments, United Nations bodies, international financial institutions and civil society to integrate gender perspectives and ensure women's Pull participation in national policies, legislation, programmes and regulatory and technical instruments in ICTs, the media and communications. Such bodies should also enable equal access for women to ICTs-based economic activities, such as small business and home-based employment, information systems and improved technologies and new employment opportunities. They should respect different and local languages, local knowledge systems and locally produced content in media and communications and increase efforts to compile and disaggregate by sex and age, statistics on ICTs use, as well as to develop gender-specific indicators on ICTs use and needs.

Welcoming the convening of the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held in Geneva in December 2003 and in Tunis in 2005, the text also urged its participants to consider the Commission's recommendations and integrate gender perspectives into every facet of the Summit. It encouraged women, gender equality experts and women information and communication technologies experts, national delegations as well as civil society and the business community to attend the Summit. CSW delegates further called for participation of women in the WSIS in Geneva in December 2003. The delegates approved the wording "high participation of women in the Summit" instead of the original wording that had called for 30 percent women's representation. This change was made following a United States objection.

Other areas where agreements have been reached include the inclusion of gender perspectives and gender-specific measurable targets in projects on ICTs for development; the development of measures to promote girls' education and enable them to access ICTs, and the development of steps to include ICTs education for girls and women in all educational levels including through methods such as distance and e-learning. Encouragement of South-South cooperation to facilitate transfer and exchange of low-cost technologies and appropriate content was likewise approved. However, there was no mention of open source technology as an example of low-cost and appropriate technology.

The final paragraph agreed upon in the discussions related to the collection, sharing, and publicizing of good practices to counter gender stereotyping, negative portrayals, and exploitation of women, in all forms of media and ICTs. The need to "urge governments to take necessary measures to combat the growing sexualisation and pornographisation of media output in terms of globalisation and the increasing privatisation of the media system" as discussed for several hours. The Group of 77 refused to compromise and delete the need to urge governments to take action on this issue in media. The delegates also deferred agreement on the promotion and increased use of local languages as well as locally produced content in media and communications.

The CSW failed to reach a consensus on violence against women and human rights. During the final stages of the negotiations, much attention was paid to Iran's refusal to accept a proposed paragraph on religion: "Condemn violence against women and refrain from invoking any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination as set out in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women." Iran wanted to add "and refrain from invoking freedom of expression to justify such manifestations of violence against women as pornography, and democracy to justify prostitution." The original paragraph, without Iran's suggested addition, is a paragraph from the Declaration on the...