Reflections on conflict in Asia, access to justice and CSW70
As the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) takes place in New York City, the city will see thousands of feminists across the world - young and old - bustling on the rather busy streets of Manhattan; some trying to find their way to the UN, some ending up in the same street over and over again.
Amid the excitement and energy that each session brings every year, this year, the corridors and side events at the United Nations will address a question that requires contextual and urgent answers - what does access to justice look like for women and girls during global political turmoil?
Intergovernmental negotiations between participating UN Member Nations on the final ‘Agreed Conclusions’ have mainly focused on legal aspects of access to justice, whilst vaguely addressing the intersectionality. There remains a humongous gap in addressing the socio-political barriers that deny access to justice to women and girls in all their diversity, and this is an issue that feels imperative to be addressed urgently in Asia today.
Across the continent, we are witnessing ongoing conflicts that are dismantling the very systems that were built to protect rights, leaving women, girls and gender diverse people exposed to continuous violence and impunity. From the Taliban’s aggressive rolling back of women’s basic human rights in Afghanistan, to Myanmar's civil war - and presently, the attack on the people of Iran - we are witnessing international laws and legal frameworks being dismissed at a time they are most needed.
In Iran, nationwide protests erupted at the end of last year that were met with brutal force from the government, resulting in thousands of women and youth arrested arbitrarily, mass communication blackouts and alleged illegal killings of protestors. This situation has now escalated further, as the United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran, targeting not only defense and leadership infrastructure resulting in the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini, but also schools and civilian infrastructures as documented across mainstream and social media.
It doesn’t require a legal expert to observe a reality so evidently against international law. Legal experts have raised concerns on the legality of these strikes - now a full-fledged war affecting American and Israeli allies in the Gulf - about illegality of the strikes and the U.S. and Israel’s blatant disregard to international law. The UN Security Council provided no authorisation for these strikes, a Council that ironically maintains veto power to the United States, and multiple violations of the UN Charter have been cited as well. In such realities, civilian casualties underscore how military interventions perpetuate justice crises, leaving survivors without reparations or accountability - the latter, one hopes, sees the light of the day.
This pattern is also mirrored across Asia. In Myanmar, where the ongoing civil war has displaced millions and completely destroyed legal protections. In Afghanistan, the Taliban continues to dismantle existing laws protecting the elimination of violence against women and girls, and formalising domestic violence; in addition to this, women and girls’ access to justice through legal protections, education and healthcare has been completely restricted which has crumbled years of feminist progress. Meanwhile, border disputes between Thailand and Cambodia have left populations displaced without access to legal protections on property and land rights.
Across the region, legal infrastructure is being erased systematically and the harshest consequences fall upon women and girls - they experience I violence that goes unpunished, their basic rights remain ignored and hope is all that remains, diminishing over time. Rohingya women and girls live this reality every single day, as their genocide persists in the region.
CSW70’s theme, therefore, isn’t an abstract thought. It certainly is a call to defend existing progressive mechanisms that produce human rights, life and the very dignity of women and girls. It is critical to protect legal aid, courts and frameworks amid state repression and war. It is critical to uphold international norms and laws to ensure domestic and foreign aggressors are held accountable; without these safeguards, laws only exist on paper and leave women and girls vulnerable to silencing, extreme violence and exploitation - conflict or not.
The world as we see it was built on justice mechanisms that are moulding to the convenience of the white oppressor. For instance, the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently sent an open invitation to his European counterparts at the Munich Security Conference to work towards the revival of white, ‘Christian’ Western colonialism at the Munich Security Conference which met with a room-wide applause. I personally don’t see the difference between any extremist religious calls to action - Rubio's call to Christian unification and reviving colonialist violence is the same as any extremist Hindu or Islamic call to violence towards each other.
As justice systems continue to crumble and the trust in multilateralism fails due to rising autocratic leadership, their every action sets a dangerous, anti-rights precedent that is being steadily, but surely, established across the world as far-right regimes lead the future of peoples of the world.
What autocratic regimes cannot recognise or fathom, though, is that they have fallen before, and because of people power; that justice systems exist because of collective struggle. Perhaps, the future may not be as bleak as it appears, and the collective push from civil society feminists at CSW each year is witness to that - despite being constantly (and literally) pushed out of rooms for not being an ‘official’ entity.
That said -
In these two weeks, CSW70 will witness the power of feminists who continue to fight tooth and nail to enter required language in policy texts, it will witness the energy and passion of youth flying hours and days to get to a city that is absolutely inaccessible to the Global Majority, and older feminists will continue their incredible work through and beyond these two weeks.
If CSW70 has to leave a lasting, unprecedented mark, it will be because of these voices that strive to ensure that access to justice goes beyond negotiated policy texts, and into the realities of women and girls everywhere.
About the author:
Vrushali Kadam is a queer gender justice researcher, activist, and communications strategist engaged in grassroots organising in India and global advocacy spaces. Grounded in an intersectional feminist and anti-caste politics, her work challenges structural violence across caste, gender, class, and sexuality.
She is a co-creator at Feminist Manch and co-founder of Community Care Collective, a global youth-led movement to advance collective care, radical love and mutual aid in all social justice movements. She leads advocacy efforts at Politics4Her Asia. Vrushali also serves on the advisory board of ChalkBack, using public art as resistance against street harassment across 60+ cities around the world, and works closely with civil society movements to translate lived realities into policy advocacy.
