The UN Commission on the Status of Women/ ECOSOW
This last Wednesday and Thursday I had the pleasure of attending the Commission on the status of Women at the United Nations for a few days out of their two month long commission. It was an amazing experience, full of information, resources, networking, and passion.
Some background before I give my personal reflections.
There are generally
around 3,000 people in town for this meeting including governments, UN
staff, and NGOs. Many NGOs come with the expectation to lobby their
governments on "agreed conclusions", this generally takes place during
the second week of the meeting, and is done in caucus groups.
The Commission on the Status of Women (hereafter referred to as “CSW” or “the Commission”) is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. It is the principal global policy-making body. Every year, representatives of Member States gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.
The Commission was established by ECOSOC resolution 11(II) of 21 June 1946 with the aim to prepare recommendations and reports to the Council on promoting women's rights in political, economic, civil, social and educational fields. The Commission also makes recommendations to the Council on urgent problems requiring immediate attention in the field of women's rights.
The Commission the Status of Women, is an important world-wide gathering. The Commission this year is focusing on Economics and the Status of Women, having many resolutions and conclusions coming up for revision. The
Organization of Ecumenical Women has worked hard to alter some of the language of the decisions, so that more compassion is included towards women.
During the Commission, I had the opportunity to attend various sessions on a multitude of topics. Due to my research on Human Trafficking I choose to attend sessions dedicated to this topic or about violence against women. Attending these sessions will hundreds of other NGO representatives was a great opportunity to learn more information, find out what other organizations are doing to bring awareness to these issues, and how the advocating is occurring on a international realm.
Being privy to the inside areas of the UN building, it was an awesome time to see that so many people are involved from various countries in organizing laws and understanding surround such important issues for society, and especially for women. It was a blessing to have seen the inner-workings, and hopefully to have the opportunity to be in that format as an official representative one day.
Overall, although I didn't get the opportunity to see any friends that live in NYC, I had a great time. I stayed at the
Seafarer's and International House, run by the ELCA. It was great to view this vital ministry to the people that travel to NY and have to find somewhere to stay.
As far as more information on Human Trafficking, I will post more links when I have some, and will also post my paper in a shortened form when I complete it by the end of this semester.
Blessings.
Labels: advocacy, ELCA, seafarers, Trafficking, UN, women
Every day should be Thanksgiving.
This past week was amazing. I got to spend some nice relaxing time with my family, enjoy my friends company, and got to think about everything going on with me nowadays.
Thanksgiving day was a small event, with just my parents, brother, aunt and cousin. My mom cooked an amazing meal, which is usual, my family does like to eat. We got to laugh and joke, watched some Dane Cook, Cheech and Chong, and Robin Williams. After eating an enormous amount of food, we rested, watched grey's anatomy, and about midnight fell into a turkey induced coma. It was good, happy, and just what I needed.
Friday I spent time with four of my favorite women. We went out for Jessica's birthday, begining the celebration at the pub. Now here is the interesting part. Basically this place is full of people we graduated high school with, so of course we got to see some of the lovely folk (sarcasm of course) that we graduated with. We danced around for a bit, Stefanie eventually dancing with this guy, who as all creepy men do came up behind her and just started dancing with her. After about 15 minutes, she gets this scared look and flees from him, and he disappears as well. As the other four ladies decide to go, I ask what he did, and she told me he stuck his hand down the front of her pants, and she freaked out and ran away. (Understandably so). The girls head out in front of me, but I stop and turn to the guys he was with, who previously had attempted to take Stef's picture. I walked up to one, tapped him on the shoulder, and asked him if he had taken a picture, that I would appreciate him deleting it. He showed me that it was too dark to actually get a picture, and apologized, to which I explained to him that he was lucky his friend had disappeared otherwise i would have made sure he got his due. Apparently this guy did not realize what happened and when I told him, he apologized and said he would tell his friend. I left and informed a bouncer of the trouble that had occurred, and told him that he may want to watch out for that guy. The girls thought I was heroic, but I was just taking care of the loose ends, and hopefully striking fear into that dudes heart. But the fun doesn't stop there....
So the next day we were going to meet up to have lunch before the five of us would be broken up till the next holiday season. As I am headed to lunch, I stopped for gas. I told the attendent to put 20 dollars of regular into my tank, he started the tank, and left to go charge my card for the 20 dollars. As you are not allowed to pump your own at this station, I just sat there and stopped paying attention. He came back and realized that he actually filled my tank instead of just putting in 20 dollars worth. He disapeared to return with my card and two charges, totalling up to the 46 dollars the whole tank had taken. I told him I wasn't going to pay for the rest of the tank, because that is not what I had asked for. He didn't speak great english, so he kept just trying to pawn the recipts off on me by saying, "I'm sorry, thank you." After arguing with him for 5 minutes, I asked for a manager or owner. He asked me to pull away from the pump so he could take more customer's, so I pulled instead up to the office, which is not somewhere he wanted me to go. I got out and walked into the office, which scared the attendent, and he came rushing over. I then explained the situation to the guy in charge, who then tried to guilt me into paying the whole thing, because, "he only makes 8 dollars an hour." I explained to him my 0 dollars an hour, and my negative 10,000 in the hole for school. He shut up about money then, but still argued with me, until finally he conceded to void the application, but he told me he would have to pump out some gas. I told him to do it quickly, because he had already made me late. So the attendent attempted to siphon some gas, which he apparently couldn't understand, and the manager came over again, he again asked me if I had any 'cash money' and I told him no. So then he asked if I could bring him money the next time I came. I told him no, because I didn't ask for my tank to be filled, and I was leaving the state. He finally just gave up, took out the pumping tube, and closed my gas tank door. He told me to, "just go." I asked if my gas cap was on, and he said yes, just go. I had a feeling it wasn't. So my house was only 2 blocks away, I went home, checked, and sure enough it wasn't there. So I convinced my brother to get in the car, in case I began beating on the man, there was someone to stop me. I ripped into the station, threw open the door to the office, and demanded, "Give me my gas cap back!" He said something in arabic, and then handed me the cap. I slammed the door and left. Finally, I was on my way to lunch, now being 45 minutes late.
So those are really the 'crazy' parts of my week, but only added to the fun of it all. I really enjoyed being home with my family, taking silly photos for our Christmas cards, watching the decorations go up for Christmas, and not participating in the consumerism of Christmas!
I am sure I will write a rant about Christmas and consumerism sometime soon, but I really should get back to listening to my Greek Prof. Peace and Blessings.
Labels: drama, gas attendants, highschool, rude treatment, thoughts, women
For all my ladies....
Men are manipulators, since birth I think. I find it fascinating how many of them seem to find their way into my life, they pop in claim that ‘your so pretty’ and then another girl walks by and you were last weeks sandwich. Men claim to want witty intelligent women, then find them, seem interested, and then follow the nearest girl that they can get some ass from.
Being used becomes a form of oppression for women, oppression which we seem to handle with poise. How many women have been cheated on? Or been lead on thinking they were going to be asked out, just to hear, “well we’re friends right? Because I met this girl tonight and I’m going to pursue her for awhile, but hopefully you will still stick around.”
No ladies. We need to stand up and demand back our ovaries. We are much better then this shit that men dish out. They play with our emotions, emotions that are easily swayed when we are pmsing and craving some affection. Ultimately girls, I don’t think men ever grow up, they take a little bit of responsibility when they finally decide that they want to leave a ‘small piece of themselves’ on this earth.
Let’s stand together, support each other, and tell men that we are worth far more then being the back up if they get shot down by that girl parading herself. Funny part is, the reason that she is parading is because she was in our position once. So really ladies, let’s all work together. No more showing off for men, no more teasing and flirting or giving yourself up so that a man will decide to spend some time with you, no more lamenting that guy that hasn’t called in a few days. Honey, we all deserve to be pursued, let’s give them the emotional roller coaster for once.
When a man treats me like the divine creation I am, and isn’t just trying to be nice to me so he can get in my pants, and holds a real conversation with me, cares about me as a person, then maybe Ill give him a call back a week later. But for now, I’m off limits...
... and all men are second best.
Labels: cheaters, life, love, ovaries, women
