This March, WoLF Executive Director Sharon Byrne presented on commercial sexual exploitation to women attending the United Nations Conference On The Status Of Women. The priority theme for this year’s conference was “accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective.”

Despite an unprecedented attack on women’s sex-based rights across the globe, the conference's priority obscures the root problem: the sex-based oppression of women and girls. WoLF believes that women and girls will never be able to escape poverty, discrimination, and trafficking while human trafficking, prostitution, surrogacy, and pornography exist unchallenged.

A note to everyone who's really disappointed with the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women:

We know, and we agree. 

UN Women was created in 2010, as a division within the UN system. The UN uses the term ‘gender’ the way many used to - before the advent of transgenderism as a political movement. For the UN, it’s a synonym for sex. They use the term gender very specifically in women’s rights advocacy. 

UN Women is not a major player within the UN system, and like many women’s rights organizations, is not consulted on matters of major policy. This effectively siloed women’s issues, while ticking a box that women’s concerns were attended to within the UN. It's not like the UN Security Council runs down the hall to see what UN Women think about an escalating conflict situation. 

The UN is funded by its member states, and the United States remains one of the most influential nations within the UN. The UN is, therefore, subject to some of its member states’ political leanings. Gender ideology has been pushed on the UN by its member states, including the US. Because gender ideology’s aim is to erase women, it was pushed hardest on UN Women, who now carry its banner. Canada is very aggressive on it.

But just like women’s issues are siloed within the UN, so are so-called LGBTQ+ issues. If you watch the UN WebTV channel today, the General Assembly is discussing the situation in the Middle East, focused on the scandalous UNRWA. The Committee Against Torture is also meeting today. You’ll see almost no meetings on anything to do with gender ideology.

The Conference on the Status of Women is attended by women, with some male ministers or government officials in attendance. Sharon recounts, at the conference, “Out of 10,000 attendees, I only saw one man pretending to be a woman, and he was from the Canadian delegation.”

Sharon shares her first-hand account of the conference as follows: 

The Conference on the Status of Women is heavy material, and I vacillate between despair and elation. It's two weeks of discussions on female genital mutilation, child marriage, poverty, women affected by conflict, horrible setbacks for women and human rights abuses like what's happening to the women of Afghanistan, women unable to access land to farm to feed their village, girls unable to talk about menstruation or get products, and more. But it's also about achieving parity in government representation, lifting women out of poverty, ending human trafficking, and using technology to help women.

Against that backdrop of meaty discussion, Gender Ideology wasn't there. Canada and maybe one other country put on something about LGBTQ2S+, but that was about it.

I attended the commemoration of 30 years of the UN Mandate for a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls. Our friend Reem Alsalem, the current Rapporteur, was honored, as were the previous five mandate holders. 

According to the previous mandate holders, the 1990s was a pinnacle era for women's rights. The Beijing Conference, with Hillary Clinton's pronouncement that women's rights are human rights, the creation of the Special Mandate, sexual harassment laws in the US, and more made this a high-water mark. There was a feeling in the overcrowded room that we're going backwards, globally, and it's harder to fight it. It was good to catch up with Reem at the conference. She wants to tackle surrogacy, and we're excited to partner with her on it!

At the Townhall, during the Conference, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: 

“Many women & girls are facing a war on their fundamental rights at home & in their communities.

We cannot accept a world in which grandmothers fear their granddaughters will enjoy fewer rights than they had.

We must speak out, loud and clear: Not on our watch.”

He also said that the patriarchy is striking back and that women must take power. Power is never given, he noted. It must be taken.

This year's theme was poverty, so there was a great deal of discussion on the subject, but few solutions, though the UN has stated the finance sector must be reformed to make it easier for women to access funds to start businesses. Swedish delegates I met affirmed the same - 99.5% of the risk capital in their country is controlled by men, making it difficult for women to gain access to it. Spain's President Sanchez passed a law requiring representative parity (40-60% women) in the Spanish government and on corporate boards. My state, California, passed a law 4 years ago to put one woman on a corporate board. That law is being overturned in court now. When asked why Spain passed such a law, President Sanchez replied that women are half the population. Of course they must share equally in the wealth and the power.

I presented on prostitution, porn, human trafficking, and surrogacy. My premise is that while commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls is allowed, we will never achieve true equality. It's too easy to create economic desperation for women, who then fall into exploitation as a means of survival.

You can watch my presentation below.

Several women from Sweden and Norway would like to collaborate with WoLF, based on watching my presentation and having similar leanings. We will hopefully schedule a Zoom meeting with them soon - Stay tuned!

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