On 12 March 2018, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) began its 62nd session in New York. The central topic is Challenges and Opportunities in Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Rural Women and Girls.
Delegates from 45 CSW member states and more than 70 countries, members states of the UN and other international organisations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), will discuss ways to provide rural women and girls with wider access to education, infrastructure and technology, food security and nutrition, as well as advanced practices in preventing gender violence and access to welfare and healthcare services.
A number of parallel side events will be held, among them high-level interactive dialogues on the implementation of the goals outlined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the achievement of concrete results towards 2020, on engaging women in media activities and making media and communications technology more accessible for women, as well as the role of mass media and communications technology in the expansion of women's rights and opportunities.
The participants will discuss modern trends, priority areas, new approaches to challenges affecting the status of women, the fulfilment of UN Economic and Social Council resolutions and other topics.
The CSW is a UN body dedicated to the promotion of gender equality. Its 62nd session currently under way in New York (from 12 to 23 March 2018) follows the principles worked out at the Fourth World Conference on Women and the 23rd special session of the UN General Assembly, entitled Women in 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace in the 21st Century, namely, meeting essential targets, addressing key challenges and mapping out further initiatives.
In the meantime, preparations continue for the first SCO Women's Forum in Beijing in May 2018 in the context of broader cooperation between the SCO Secretariat and UN bodies within the framework of China's SCO presidency.