USHRN Delegation to CSW63 - Statement on the Status of Women and Girls

Mar 21, 2019

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USHRN Delegation to CSW63 - Statement on the Status of Women and Girls


We, the delegation of women at the Commission on the Status of Women CSW63, would like to address the United States’ failure to properly address the issues affecting marginalized women in the US.

In the United States, with the Trump administration at the helm, we have seen undeniable, egregious, and unapologetic violations of human rights, which disproportionately impact women and girls including transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) people. It has become increasingly apparent that the progress of women and girls is being arrested by the cutting of funds to essential services on which they rely, and that the legitimacy of protection systems themselves is being undermined.

Any policy effort seeking to meaningfully achieve gender justice must comprehensively address the realities of Black, brown and Indigenous women. This means confronting their lived realities and taking direction from their movements, understanding how systems based on race, gender, economics, sexuality, and citizenship status, among others, function independently and collectively to create unique experiences of oppression.

In particular, Black, brown and Indigenous women and girls, including cis-gender and transgender women/girls as well as GNC people, continue to be systematically denied basic human rights, such as access to health services, education, decent work, security, safety, and access to and protection of their sacred sites. We as a united delegation of frontline activists, organizers, and human rights defenders would like to make a unified statement on the current status of women and the issues we are advocating for:

 
Women/Girls/Femmes of African Descent:

In January 2016, The United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent stated, “The colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism, and racial inequality in the US remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent.”

Moreover, Black women and girls experienced unique forms of discrimination under these systems and practices. Taken from their homelands, they were subjected to both forced manual labor and forced reproductive labor, to birth the next generation of enslaved people. The implications of this nexus of labor and its legacy in current experiences of gender-based oppression must be acknowledged and effectively accounted for in any efforts to remedy these violations of black women, girls, and femmes’ human rights here in the US.

These legacies continue to plague black women and girls in areas of mass incarceration, the foster care system, education, employment, healthcare, reproductive care, domestic violence, work and public spaces, and in accessing relevant and sustainable social services.

1. The number of women incarcerated in the U.S. increased by 800% over the last three decades.  Black women are three times more likely than white women to be incarcerated.
   
   
2. Black women represent 13% of the female population in the United States but comprise 30% of all females incarcerated under state or federal jurisdiction. Black children are almost 9 times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison.
   
   
3. The depression rate among Black women is estimated to be almost 50% higher than that of white women.
   
   
4. Black children makeup 24% of the foster care population but comprise only 14% of the US child population. Black children are diagnosed with higher rates of mood/psychotic and behavior/conduct disorders linked to prescribing antipsychotic medications.
   
   
5. According to 2014 US Census data, Black families make up 27% of those living under the poverty line while only constituting 11% of the US population. Of the 23% of black families that live below the poverty line, 46% are households headed by single mothers.
   
   
6. Black women are more than three times as likely to die during childbirth than are white women, according to the Centers for Diseases and Preventions.

 

Cooperative member-learners and parents of the Anna Julia Cooper Learning and Liberation Center in Atlanta, GA, marching during the 2019 MLK Day Parade. Left to right: Yolande Tomlinson, Co-founder and parent; Taliba Obuya, member-owner and parent.

Indigenous Peoples:

It is the US government’s obligation to respect and protect the sovereignty and existence of indigenous peoples as a peoples with distinct cosmovisions than those of dominant society. Not only have indigenous peoples retained distinct social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that differ from dominant society, but they have also retained distinct spiritual connections and responsibilities to culturally significant territories, waters, plants, animals and sacred sites.

We continue to see the ongoing threat and direct desecration of sacred sites such as the proposed construction of a 30-meter telescope on top of the sacred mountain, Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and the proposed raising of the Shasta Dam which would result in the cultural genocide of the Winnemem Wintu peoples of Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

It is essential to have free, prior and informed consent from indigenous peoples who are protecting and revitalizing their distinct cultural practices and lifeways, and to protect the waters, territories and animals essential to the continuance of indigenous cultures. Protecting the spiritual rights, cultural and natural resources of indigenous peoples is essential for the spiritual and cultural survival of indigenous peoples all over the world. Indigenous peoples must be given the resources and support to live out indigenous economies, and indigenous educational systems free from harmful eurocentric cultural models to ensure the continuance and survival of indigenous cosmovisions for the next seven generations.

 

Left to right: Pua Case, Hawaiian cultural practitioner and Mauna Kea protector, Caleen Sisk, Chief and spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.

 

Immigrant Rights:

The US government is systematically violating the human rights of migrants and they need to be held accountable for these violations. Migrants and asylum seekers are entitled to the same human rights protections as all individuals in the United States. However, the US has implemented numerous harsh immigration enforcement policies that violate the human rights of migrants including: increased border militarization, the destruction of sacred lands through the construction of a border wall, family separation, detention and deportation, racial profiling, and turning away asylum seekers at port of entries. These measures are intended to prevent and deter migrants from entering the US through a process called Attrition Through Enforcement. Thousands of asylum seekers and refugees, a majority from Central America, are fleeing from their home countries due to extreme violence. Yet, their human rights are denied at the border and they are treated with indignity.

 

As delegates representing issues on immigration, we are here to meet with US Ambassadors and demand a moratorium on family separation and the violation of migrants’ human rights at the US/Mexico border. Moreover, we are here to build with other women and groups to create more solidarity around protecting women and children and their rights at the border.

 

 

USHRN members Jovana Renteria (left) and Marlene Chavez (right) at CSW63 connecting with immigrant rights leaders.