2020 has seen the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations put on hold. The Conference of the Parties (COP) Climate Summit was postponed from December 2020 to November 2021 while many countries struggled to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and all its short- and long-term repercussions. This decision was made very...
Last June, the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and Philando Castile, together with over 650 civil society organizations, called on the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) to convene a special session to respond to the situation of escalating human rights abuses in the United States. They sought the creation of an...
On October 23, a webinar was hosted by the NGO Women's Rights & Gender Equality Caucus, Australia and Asia-Pacific Women's Watch (APWW). Four female leaders shared their observations of how COVID-19 has impacted women's livelihoods in the Asia Pacific region.
Yukiko Oda from Japan Women's Watch covered the East Asia region. Despite the...
United Nations member countries recently voted by secret ballot to elect 15 countries to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Human rights observers have raised concerns about the election of China, Cuba and Russia to the body. Saudi Arabia was a candidate, but was not elected. The US withdrew from the HRC in 2018; many observers regretted the US decision...
To create the feeling of interaction during the virtual UN Women Town Hall Meeting with Civil Society (October 19, 2020), the organizers used Mentimeter, an interesting tool which was new to me. Participants were invited to respond to two questions using one word, and the responses were represented graphically. The words which were most often used were displayed larger. This...
What will people say 25 years from now say about what happened in 2020? With over 600 people from around the world joining an online Town Hall Meeting on October 19, 2020, Lopa Bannerjee, Director of the UN Women Civil Society Division, opened with this thought-provoking question.
The first speaker was Asa Regner, Deputy Executive Director...