Feature story
By Esther R. Suter (*)
For the first time in its 70-year history, the Commission on the Status of Women did not achieve consensus in agreed conclusions. The session, which began 9 March, started with a significant procedural shift as negotiations began six weeks before to reach agreed language. The US, after leaving the Commission on the Status of Women, declared its non-agreement to all references to sexual and reproductive health and rights and the definition of “gender,” leading to a proposal, which was accepted, for the adoption of the document for the first time by recorded vote rather than by consensus.
This time a different atmosphere reigned compared to previous times: empty seats in the official sessions at the UN where various countries of the Global South were missing. The UN issued around 3,000 grounds passes for nongovernmental organization delegates, whereas in 2025 there were over 10,000. A general uncertainty about the obvious backlash in several achieved goals was due also to refused funding. Civil society groups held a significant number of parallel and side events.
Since the 4th UN World Conference of Women in Beijing in 1995, Ecumenical Women, a coalition formed of about 20 global Christian church organisations of women, has offered an Orientation Day for advocacy before the official Commission on the Status of Women session. The orientation includes broad information for nongovernmental organization delegates about the Commission on the Status of Women and UN Women, as well about the many parallel events prepared from faith-based and church organisations.
Dr Donna Bollinger is working as the United Church of Christ Main Representative to the United Nations. A webinar on “Women as Peacekeepers in Armed Conflict: Voices from Sudan and South-Sudan,” moderated by Rev. Nicole Ashwood, director of the WCC Just Community of Women and Men programme, offered direct testimony from Priscilla Ajak Mangar Mamur. She emphasized the peace-building role of women in communities and families, in an ongoing war, as a tradition of preserved matrilineal culture.
Bollinger explained their partnership with conflict countries, for example, Palestine, as well as with women of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and its Gender Unit, working as a nongovernmental organization with marginalized women advocating for gender-based violence. Multilateralism is important for Ecumenical Women and an upcoming issue is the election of the next general secretary. Proposals of dialogues with candidates are scheduled for 20-21 April in the UN General Assembly, with admitted civil society.
ACT Alliance UN representative Caterina Tino described how ACT Alliance, in its manyfold cooperation with UN offices, builds bridges with the faith-based movements. ACT Alliance’s gender work for a broad public is based on scientific work and practical experience. For the Commission on the Status of Women, ACT Alliance had prepared a side event on “Faiths in Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships: The Tipping Point in Women and girls’ access to justice in armed conflict,” together with UN office on Genocide Prevention, Finn Church Aid, Lead Integrity, and Church Aid Uganda. Along the questions of access to justice by partnerships of faith-based and secular actors for women and girls in atrocity conflicts and the integration of women and girls in such conflicts into mediation and peace-making efforts by diverse governments and UN, ACT Alliance strongly hopes for changing narratives of cooperation and partnership and sees justice as a cultural transformation.
Daniel Pieper, Lutheran Office for World Community at UN, understands the role of faith-based organisations as clarifying the role of church. Priorities should be discernment, he said, combined with study processes, about what we can say together. He added that churches have responsibility for cohesion in society, and a changing dynamic is challenging our prophetic voice. While civil society is frustrated about the lack of progress and may experience more restrictions, Pieper sees the moment to use prophetic language from the religious side and to maintain the progress achieved so far.
(*) Esther R. Suter is a theologian, pastor and freelance journalist from Basel, Switzerland, with extensive experience in covering stories about global, regional and local ecumenism.
