Oral Intervention on Behalf of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts

Delivered as an oral intervention on the 6^th March 2012 during a panel of the 56^th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The webcast of the session can be found here, and the speech can be heard at 1 hour and 1 minute in. 

Thank you, Mr Chair.

The World Association, I believe, answers some of the panel’s challenges through giving girls and young women the spaces to have their voices heard and the advocacy skills to participate fully.

In response to the Ugandan panellist’s comments on social entrepreneurs, I want to say that I want to be a social entrepreneur – using technology and exhibitions to achieve gender equality. How would the panellist from Uganda suggest starting this process?

I already have a project that I started as a girl guide - ‘Speak Out, Reach Out, Camp Out’ – that aims to inspire, inform and empower young women to take action on the Millennium Development Goals in the UK. My project utilises a website, blog, and social media to share multimedia amongst peer networks. I ask the panellists how we can encourage the further utilisation of technology for gender equality work.

One element of my project is an exhibition of positive female role models, which seeks to challenge stereotypes by drawing attention to women who have excelled beyond traditional expectations.

I believe that stereotypes of both men and women are also an underlying cause of violence against women and girls including in intimate relationships. As the panellists said this is a widespread problem and I wish to suggest non-formal education as one solution.

Our Stop the Violence campaign, called for by our 10 million young members, aims to ‘start the conversation’ about this topic through a joint project with UN Women to create a non-formal, co-educational curriculum. I feel this campaign is vital because I have experienced violence in my own personal relationships, and I ask the panellists and all delegates here to support our campaign.

As the panellist from Uganda suggested I think CSW is missing an opportunity. As a young delegate at the past two sessions I have noticed the limited opportunities given to young women to participate in the decision making processes at the CSW. We have a space created by the NGOs that work directly on our interests, and other NGOs are forced to take notice when we speak out at events dominated by older women, but in support of the panellists challenge, it seems to me that young members of government delegations seem to be few and far between.

This needs to change and we need a universal definition of ‘youth’. I would be interested in the panellists’ views on this matter.

Thank you.