The Women and Media Collective together with the Asia Pacific Women’s Watch and South Asia Women’s Watch organised a South Asia Civil Society Consultation for Beijing+20 on the 16 and 17th of October 2014.

Members of civil society organisations, women’s rights experts, state representatives and academics from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka discussed key issues and concerns of the region relating to the Beijing declaration and Platform for Action (BPFA).

Each country focused on the challenges faced within the critical areas of conflict, poverty, economic rights, climate change, violence against women, environmental degradation and sexual and reproductive health and rights. While the critical areas of the BPFA were deliberated at the consultation they were also aligned with the ongoing discussion on the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).

The BPFA was adopted by the consensus in September 1995. The declaration embodies the commitment of the international community to the advancement of women and to the implementation of the platform for action, ensuring that a gender perspective is reflected in all policies and programmes at the national, regional and international levels. At the fifty ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York next year the challenges to implement the BPFA and the opportunities for achieving gender equality and empowerment of women will be examined. It is here that he commission will undertake a review of the progress made in implementing the BPFA, 20 years after it was adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women.

Click here to view the South Asia Declaration on Beijing + 20