Women's Land Rights and the CSW

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is an intergovernmental body and functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) mandated to promote gender equality and the advancement of women.

The CSW has been responsible for organising the world conferences on women, including Beijing in 1995. The CSW drafted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the CEDAW Optional Protocol, and reviews progress in the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

The CSW discusses a different priority theme in each session and formulates ‘agreed conclusions’ on that theme, which are negotiated between member states and include recommendations for action by governments, intergovernmental bodies, civil society actors, and other relevant stakeholders.

The 2012 session of the CSW (CSW 56) focused on the empowerment of rural women as a way to eradicate poverty and hunger, and promote development. Regrettably, the Commission did not adopt agreed conclusions on the priority theme at its fifty-sixth session.

The priority topic provided a critical opportunity to advance women’s status in rural areas. ILC engaged in this process, starting with the dissemination of an infonote to explain what the CSW is about and how civil society actors can engage with it.

ILC also, jointly with FAO and IFAD, organized a side-event entitled “How can women’s land rights be secured? Learning from successful examples” at the CSW on 1 March 2012. Chaired by FAO, this side event brought together representatives from Government, the UN system and other international organisations, civil society organisations, academia and grassroots women to share and learn from experiences of how to secure women’s land rights and support women in negotiating and obtaining their rights. You can find all the information related to the side-event, including bios of panelists, powerpoint presentations, and a summary of the discussion, on this page.

In the lead-up to this event, ILC facilitated an online discussion on the Land Portal, an interactive knowledge platform with a dedicated Gender page, and in the FSN-Forum to gather examples. 

A synthesis of the discussion was shared in New York during the side-event. The discussion focused on:

- (successful) examples of women claiming their rights;

- examples of policies and tools that promote women's land rights;

- the role of women's organisations; and

- the wider policy context, affecting or promoting women's land rights.