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Accelerated action and transformative pathways: women as leading forces of sustainable change – Call for joint action in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic
The devastating impact and rapid spread of the coronavirus and the respiratory disease it causes (COVID-19) have made public health responses the absolute priority of governments around the world. Affected countries are struggling to tackle the health risks while mitigating the socio-economic repercussions of confinement, production slowdown and job losses. However, the consequences related to COVID-19 are only starting to unfold and require a global approach, new vision and joint action.
Merely expressing human rights concerns in such an unprecedented situation is not enough. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) therefore issues this Call for Joint Action. If COVID-19 teaches us only one lesson, this should be that solidarity is neither optional nor is it an act of charity. COVID-19 has shown that none of us is safe unless we are all safe. Solidarity is the strongest means to resist a virus that recognizes no border or status.
The CEDAW Committee would like to seize the opportunity and calls for joint action against the Covid-19 pandemic from a women’s rights perspective, and solicits participation from all key stakeholders, and in particular States parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Convention). It is thus issuing a guidance note on CEDAW and COVID-19 with practical guidelines for States to mitigate the devastating impact that the pandemic is having more specifically on women and girls. COVID-19 has affected victims regardless of gender, geography, ethnicity, religion, wealth or any other status. However, with our societies being unequal in the first place, the consequences of the current crisis has impacted women in a disproportionate and more severe manner. Women have experienced multiple and compounded forms of discrimination while on the front lines of responses, at home, in the health workforce and in various sectors of production.
While important events and meetings regarding the 25-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing+25 review) such as the 64th session of Commission on the Status of Women and the Generation Equality Forum have been postponed by the pandemic, the Committee calls for concrete actions based on the commitments acknowledged therein as they remain even more valid than ever before, with a sharper focus on the explicit implementation of the articles of the CEDAW Convention.
The world health crisis is a test for governance, leadership and democratic institutions everywhere, for keeping national and international commitments, and adhering to the principles of gender equality, non-discrimination, solidarity, both nationally and internationally. The Committee is fully conscious that no State institution and no leader can do it alone. This is the time for joint action.
In addition, the Committee calls for the conceptualization of support models for stimulating local action in a bottom-up mode based on the strategic premise that in such a global crisis, every local group and individual action counts.
