CSIPM supports the Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality, cautions about omissions

By Paola Romero and Paula Gioia - La Via Campesina, October 27, 2023

Chair, representatives of member states, observers, colleagues, persons of all genders, sexual orientations, classes, castes, ethnicities, races, abilities, and ages.

On behalf of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) we start by expressing our solidarity with all the civilians in areas of conflict and protracted crises, especially those in Gaza, currently deprived of shelter, medical assistance, water, and adequate food.

The Women and Gender Diversities Working Group of the CSIPM thanks the chairs for the Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment Workstream. We also thank the CFS chair and the secretariat and the other UN agencies who supported the process.

We have participated in this workstream with full commitment, bringing together a beautiful mosaic of people and experiences from around the world. We learned what true solidarity is; and how to support a diversity of people who experience multiple and intersecting oppressions. We learned how much it means to make visible those who are made invisible and to care for all people.

The negotiation process was emotionally draining for us and the space was often violent, bringing many in the room to tears. While we were negotiating and as we speak here now, many lives in our homelands are suffering gender-based violence and sexual violence. Millions are still not able to realize their right to food, and are even being killed for being who they are. We had high hopes for an ambitious and progressive outcome for these Guidelines.

Our participation made a difference not only in this UN space but also in the lives of some of the people we carry in our hearts and thoughts.

Despite the significant tensions and difficulties, we recognize that the final outcomes will have positive repercussions, also for some of the members of our communities. We succeeded in bringing a human rights framework into the document as well as important references to the role of women’s organizations and social movements. Indigenous Peoples and peasants, two very important constituencies of the CSIPM, are also recognised in the guidelines. Along with several other aspects.

However, the final text contains many omissions that diminish our hopes and leave us unsatisfied. These include:

• The recognition of land as a commons
• Free prior and informed consent for Indigenous Peoples
• The rights of LGBTQIA+
• The redistribution of unpaid care work
• Agroecology
• Intersectionality
• Addressing women and diversities under occupation
• Universal social protection is a crucial right in the realisation of the right to food.

Those aspects are not addressed, exploitation of, and violence against the most disaffected in our communities will continue. Therefore, as long as some of us are excluded, marginalised, and made invisible, we cannot truly celebrate.

At the same time, CSIPM avoids the trap of political polarization and the dichotomy between good and bad. We prepared an extensive evaluation document available on the CSIPM website and we have drafted an explanatory note to be added to the Annex, expressing our concerns, while also recognising this document as a starting point for continuing discussions in the CFS to achieve gender equality in food systems. This explanatory note has already been shared with the CFS Secretariat, and we seek member states’ support for its inclusion in the Annex.

With these clarifications, the CSIPM supports the endorsement of the Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment.

We will contribute to their dissemination and use them in our future advocacy. The upcoming MYPoW presents us with plenty of opportunities to keep advancing towards the real transformation of the lived realities of so many marginalized peoples and address gender as a transversal and intersectional aspect of the progressive realization of the Right to Food.

We exist! We will continue to demand our rights in our communities and societies, from our governments, in the CFS, and in all spaces in the United Nations, and we also truly commit to bringing these achievements back home.

Thank you.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.