An Anglican Delegation will attend CSW70 - the 70th Commission on the Status of Women from 9-19 March, held in New York. It brings together stakeholders from Member States, United Nations entities and civil society to discuss women’s role in society, challenges that affect women and girls and ways to overcome barriers to equality.

This year, the theme of the discussions is: ‘Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls’. The two-week event follows International Women’s Day (March 8), an annual day that this year ‘calls for action to dismantle the structural barriers to equal justice: discriminatory laws, weak legal protections and harmful practices and social norms that erode the rights of women and girls’. The awareness day and the UN event both stress the importance of a fair and just legal system, implemented and accessible the world over. CSW70 is working to ensure and strengthen ‘access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and addressing structural barriers’.

The Anglican delegation – speaking out against injustice

The Anglican delegation at CSW70 includes representatives online and in-person from Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Canada, Barbados, South Africa and England. The delegation also includes young adults as part of a growing ‘Young Adult Advocacy Programme’ being developed by the Advocacy and UN Team at the Anglican Communion Office. The Anglican delegation will work closely with the Episcopal Church based in New York and members of the International Anglican Women’s Network. Faith actors will explore the role of churches in providing pastoral care to women and girls facing injustice and being conduits to the authorities that can help them. The Anglican delegation will speak about the inherent dignity of each person, made in the image of God, regardless of gender, faith or nationality, and will advocate for each person’s right to equal access to justice.

Mandy Marshall, Director for Gender Justice and Safe Church at the Anglican Alliance, is present at CSW70, as well as others from around the Communion. Mandy shares: 'At a time when women's rights around the world are being pushed back and threatened, it is so important that we all make a stand to ensure women's rights are human rights and enshrined and protected in law. We need to see rights that protect the girl child from early and forced marriage, to be able to complete their education and gain a job without any harassment. We need laws to end gender-based violence in every country, especially domestic abuse, so that perpetrators are held to account for the devastation and destruction they cause.

‘We want women around the Anglican Communion to flourish into all they can be so that none of us miss out on the unique gift that each woman is to us. We cannot do this alone. Men need to engage with women's rights to ensure that every woman, no matter who she is, can live a full life, protected by the law.'

Agnes Lam (a young advocate from Hong Kong and Co-chair of the Anglican Youth Network) is attending CSW70 as part of the Anglican Communion delegation. She shares why she feels advocacy work is a vital pillar of her faith. ‘As members of the global Anglican family, we are bound together as one body. This means the struggle of a woman on the other side of the world is not distant from me—it is my own. When she is denied justice, the whole body is wounded. That is why I am not just hopeful, but compelled, to call upon this family to rise as peacemakers and persistent seekers of justice in our broken, yet beloved, world.’

Agnes Lam, a young Anglican advocate from Hong Kong who is attending CSW70 as part of the Anglican delegation

The Revd Dr Laura Marie Piotrowicz (Rector at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Diocese of Saskatoon in the Anglican Church of Canada) has been involved in advocacy work for gender justice for many years, particularly in terms of opposing human trafficking in her local area. Supporting the Anglican delegation, she is attending CSW as volunteer co-Chair of ‘Ecumenical Women’, a coalition of churches which collaborates on worship, events and advocacy at the United Nations in New York. Revd Laura recently compared unequal access to justice to a thick, visible fog on society, saying, ‘The rights for women and girls exist; yet for many, women and girls, they are just not accessible. At times, they appear to be within reach, until something floats in between. At other times, they exist in theory, but the practical application is absent or inadequate. God help us, but in recent years, we are seeing equality decline, as rights are diminished or removed altogether. There is no country that has achieved gender equality, and at the current rate of progress, it will take hundreds of years to get there.

‘The church is, like so many institutions, reflective of society. One need not look far or deep to find expressions of misogyny, bullying, sexism, and violence. Yet we know we can do better. And this is why the church speaks out against unjust systems and structures. We are called to shine the light, a light so strong that it would burn off the mist that shrouds equality and justice from over half the world’s population.’

A short reel featuring Anglican delegation members reflecting on their participation in the 70th Commission on the Status of Women.

Find out more about the advocacy work the Anglican Communion Office is involved with at the United Nations.

Read a recent article on the importance of International Women’s Day from Mandy Marshall, Director for Gender Justice.

Read a recent article from the Revd Dr Laura Marie Piotrowicz on the unequal access to justice experienced by women and girls.