United Nations

[I have friends hopping all 'bout the globe, doing creative, legal, and educational work on women's and race/ethnicity issues. Every once and a while I'll be posting dispatches. This one is from one of my old college roomates, Supriya Pillai. We lived right here. Anyway, below please find her impressions on this March's meetings held by the UN Commission on the Status of Women. I wonder, Eyes on Hillary, First Wives Club Contenders, Politicas, and Are We Ready? has there been anything from any US candidates on any international women's issues?]

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by Supriya Pillai

I’ve been in the basement of the UN for all of last week and I’ll be there until the end of this week. The Commission on the Status of Women meets every year to discuss government’s various commitments to a particular theme having to do with women. General, I know and, annoyingly, pretty non-binding, but the theatre I have been witness to has really been something. Watching world politics unfold in one room as people comb through language and text, the silent fights become more vocal. Diplomacy is just a nice way of fighting. Like, when most delegates take the mic, they respectively thank their other delegates, the chair and then they proceed with their “fuck yous”– but ever so gently.

This year, the theme is the Girl Child. Interesting to note, there are no international treaties, documents, etc that indicate that girls can express their human rights. Rather, there are places where girls are protected (i.e. by their families), but in and of themselves, they are not entitled to inalienable human rights. Read the rest of this entry »