By Karmen Tornius and Lars Engberg-Pedersen
Speaking of the Commission on the Status of Women 70th Session (CSW70), the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: “The fact that the commission, for the first time in its history, went to a vote, tells us about the headwinds that we are all facing.” Many women’s organizations and feminists also rang the alarm bells. In all previous sessions, the CSW’s Agreed Conclusions had been adapted by consensus.
Others, however, pointed out that what we witnessed was a multilateral success, whereby the attempt of the United States to derail CSW by requesting a recorded vote was blocked by the collaboration between other country delegations.
We posit that the contestations in the CSW are not new, and that rethinking the utility of consensus as a useful yardstick for measuring the success and importance of CSW as a multilateral forum for negotiating global gender norms was long overdue. We therefore argue against romanticizing consensus and invite strategic thinking around vote-based decision making.
History of CSW consensus
The “headwinds” are indeed not new, and they have casted shadows on the value of the CSW for years. Several observers have described well-orchestrated attempts to derail or block any progress during the negotiations.
For instance, the CSW67 in 2023 discussed the term ‘technology-facilitated gender-based violence’. The term had been developed by an expert group to capture, among other things, how online and offline acts tend to reinforce gender-based violence.
The Commission could not agree on the term and referred instead to ‘gender-based violence that occurs through or is amplified by the use of technologies’ – a vague notion downplaying that digital technologies enable new forms of violence.
One argument against the proposed concept was that the CSW could not adopt a new term without a UN-approved definition. Similar arguments have been used to exclude the concept of femicide from Agreed Conclusions.
Moreover, in 2003 and 2012, the CSW had not adopted Agreed Conclusions at all. On both occasions the subject of debate had been gender-based violence which one should think that everyone can agree to eliminate. Moreover, endless hours had been spent on negotiating terms such as ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’, ‘comprehensive sexual education’, ‘gender stereotypes’, ‘intimate partner violence’, etc.
Cause for concern
Why, then, does the lack of consensus cause so much concern this year? The “headwinds”, in the words of Guterres, have become a storm.
There is a widely felt sense that the conservative and right-wing political groups are connected in ways which could be described as the Global Right. Beyond contesting feminist values and LGBTQ rights, traditional gender roles, particularly in a family context, have become central to these groups’ discourses as well as increasingly accepted by men and women around the world.
In this climate, the CSW70 vote is perceived as another major setback in upholding and protecting the global women’s rights norms.
What’s in a consensus
The desirability of consensus in CSW is bound by key debates on multilateralism, how it works and how it ought to work. For one thing, countries cannot be bound by international decisions without their consent. Consensus signifies that all countries have made concessions to their sovereign interests when agreeing to a shared position. This may explain why resolutions only adopted by a majority in UN bodies are considered to have weaker policy impact.
Since the contestations and backsliding on gender equality issues are not new, consensus is also seen as a shield to the backlash. In this sense, consensus upholds a normative regime on the importance of gender equality and on how to achieve it.
However, the argument that consensus indicates absence of objection does not hold when we consider action and implementation as the true measures of commitment around gender issues. For decades countries have participated in CSW and consented to conclusions with policy implications that their national governments either do not care for or even disagree with.
Endorsing progressive gender equality norms in international forums can also be a strategy to divert attention away from the lack of progress at the national level. In reality, it is obvious that contestations around gender issues are widespread. The focus on consensus at the CSW does a good job at masking these disagreements and creates an illusion that there is agreement about progressive gender equality goals.
Not least, a major criticism to the aspiration of consensus is that it often leads to weaker, watered-down documents because of a small contesting minority. As such, the collective ambitions may be lowered to accommodate actors who are unlikely to domesticate the Agreed Conclusions of CSW anyway.
Imagining post-consensus CSW
If achieving progressive consensus at the CSW becomes unattainable, how might gender equality goals still be advanced through multilateral decision-making? Firstly, one could argue that there is strength in a document adopted by a vote because by rendering disagreement a more viable option, the “yes” vote signals a stronger “pro” position.
Secondly, if a consensus should emerge, it can be perceived as more of an achievement and hold more weight for directing policy. Thirdly, stronger but more contested outcome documents are more likely to match the ambitions of civil society groups, therefore providing a stronger advocacy tool.
Fourthly, more transparency around contestations will indicate to civil society where they should direct their efforts. This is, indeed, important as very few country delegations include civil society representatives, meaning that the Agreed Conclusions emerge in a non-transparent manner.
Finally, removing the possibility of blocking the whole process by sidetracking consensus will make delay tactics and obstructions futile and could encourage good-faith engagement with difficult topics for a negotiated outcome.
While definitely not without its risks, conclusions adopted by a majority of the members of the CSW are likely to enable substantial negotiations and progress on gender equality. Rethinking goals and strategies for vote-based CSW conclusions may become the key task for the proponents of gender equality for years to come.
Karmen Tornius is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). Her research focuses on how Ukrainian women’s organizations’ participate in policy negotiations at a time of war. Her previous projects have focused on the African Union’s gender governance, UN World Conferences on Women and the global women, peace and security agenda.
Lars Engberg-Pedersen is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). His research concentrates on international norms primarily related to gender equality and how they influence change at national and local levels. Moreover, he works on Danish and international development cooperation, its administration and its changing nature.
Image: micheile henderson on Unsplash
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of the EADI Debating Development Blog or the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes