Yesterday the celebration of the women’s day was held and the UN secretary general       
made a very appreciated speech. During his speech there was an action taken in the
gallery with women showing letters forming GEAR UP, which made him smile and saying look
at this Ambassadors!

Last night we had a great evening together with a big group US women and some
”international” coming to a seminar about WILPF lobby work. It was organised by our
WILPF office here in New York under the leadership of  AnnJanette Rosga Ph.D., the
Director of the UN Office, who together with our New York interns (all also working hard
during the CSW) made very interesting presentations about WILPF, what we do and how to
about lobby strategies. I was contributing with some tips about lobbying from my
exprience.

After having spent two days lobbying at the NGO Forum before the CSW and three days at
CSW events on our campaign ”You get what you pay for” showing the figures World military
spending 2008: 1 464 000 000 000 USD or 4 000 000 000 USD per day - see also the leaflet
on our web side! –  and the GEAR campaign (Gender Equality Architecture Reform) in the
UN, it is very disappointing that none of these issues are reflected in the final
declaration from this CSW. The decision about the declaration from the CSW was already
taken on Tuesday and it only reaffirms the Beijing Platform for Action from 1995. This
means that the Security Council resolution 1325 is not included since it was decided in
2000 and that there is not anything about the GEAR. The explanation given to this is
that if new negotiations were opened up on the Beijing Platform for Action there are big
risks that it would be
weakened.

About GEAR there has been presented a Resolution from the Norwegian Government and as
far as I know when writing this joined by the US. According to information here those
countries as well as the EU is in full support of the GEAR. At the same time but there
is no  support from several countries in other regions of the world. We have also
learned that there will be a resolution about Palestine, which was not yet presented.

I have met only some WILPFers from around the world from Australia, Colombia, Italy/US,
Japan and several from the US as I mentioned.  From Sweden we are four hard working
WILPFers: Josefine Karlsson, Pia Johansson, Tove Ivergård and myself. Yesterday also
Laura Roskos, US co- president joined our team.

One big thing here is that women had to wait so long to be registered on Sunday. Some
told me they had waited for almost nine hours!!!! Why are we women treated like this is
the question. So an open letter I being sent to UN Secretary to express our outrage with
the process. The initiative is taken by trade union women saying that they represent
more than 200 million members of the international trade union globally. As we  from
Sweden came already on Friday we did not have to wait that long but still long enough to
also react. As I also learned many  did not even register to get their badge. As many of
the side events are outside the UN building it is not necessary to have a badge to
participate.


Kirsti Kolthoff
President of the Swedish section of WILPF
WILPF international coordinator for the CSW .