This week’s blog comes from Dora Vrdlovec, SI UN representative, Vienna. At the Vienna +
20 conference Dora attended the meeting entitled ‘Women’s rights at stake?!
Voices of women’s right’s activists’ which took a look at past achievements in women’s rights.

‘Women’s rights at stake!?’ talked about the history of human
rights. It was 20 years ago, at the second UN conference on Human Rights, that the
multiple forms of violence against women were recognised as human rights
violations. 171 states, by signing the Vienna Declaration and Program for
Action (VDPA) recognised that “Gender-based violence and all forms of sexual harassment
and exploitation, including those resulting from cultural prejudice and
international trafficking, are incompatible with the dignity of the human
person, and must be eliminated”.

Many speakers at the event expressed their appreciation for
what has been achieved over the last 20 years. Since the VDPA there has been
greater interest in the CEDAW with women’s groups writing shadow reports about
their governments’ lack of implementation and demanding better
national legislation. The UN appointed the first Special Rapporteur on Violence
against Women which led to richer field work, including research about gender
based persecution and gender quotas for judges. The MDG’s
have also helped in that gender perspectives have been brought to the table, particularly
on issues such as maternal mortality, HIV and AIDS and women’s education.

Despite all these leaps, gender inequality still exists on a
massive scale and although we have 
passed many great milestones governments’ lack of implementation and
legislation has allowed gender violence to persist. The primacy of human rights is not yet reflected
in the policies and institutions of a great number of states, including some of
the most powerful. Despite the progress made in institutionalizing human rights
systems, in real politics vested interests, in particular business interests,
they still tend to prevail. Governments must be
reminded about what they have signed onto and what their agreements are to both
their citizens and to the International Community. In many countries there has
been a strong backlash against women’s rights. With Post 2015 looming, we have
the chance to shape an entire goal on women’s rights and to solidify an agenda.
A lot has been achieved but there remains a lot to gain.