Representation Watch Takeaways

delegation, as we worked upon ensuring our collective voice and opinion on an important topic was heard in the CSW.

You can read up more about Harmful Traditional Practices and our organization’s stance on them in the IFMSA Policy Document here.

During the CSW66, IFMSA hosted a parallel event with Ipas called “Intergenerational Dialogue on Gender, SRHR and Climate Justice'' . Invited panelists include Hamaiyal Sana from The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health and Youth Advisory Panel, Chiagoze Udeh from UNFPA Joint Youth Working Group on Population, SRHR and Climate Change, Jeevika Shiv, National Youth Gender Activist, India, Laura Valenciano, Executive Director, ACCEDER, Cecilia Espinoza Palacios, Senior Advocacy Advisor, Ipas with an IFMSA speaker on the panel: Klaudia Szymus, IFMSA Liaison for SRHR Issues, incl. HIV & AIDS. The moderador was IFMSA Delegate Miriam Edith Santiago López.

IFMSA also hosted the CSW66 Side Event for IFMSA members ‘Climate Justice 101’ , moderated by Miriam Edith Santiago López, IFMSA Delegate with speakers as Arya Manandhar, from Greentech for women, Ana María Rodríguez Pereira, from Acceder, Oindrila Ghosh, from Fridays of Future and the Liaison Officer for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Issues, incl. HIV and AIDS, Klaudia Szymuś.

Side and parallel events:

Social media:

The delegation was able to maintain a strong social media presence throughout CSW66. On the first day of the event, the delegation prepared a “Meet the Delegation” post, which introduced CSW66 and outlined the delegation’s goals. In the following days, delegates were responsible for selecting quotes from different speakers and civil societies and publishing them on IFMSA’s Twitter and Instagram. Additionally, the delegation also published IFMSA’s calls to action to governments and NMOs on Twitter, with Each delegate also recorded a short clip of the specific call-to-action inspired by CSW66, and the series was able to gain high traction on various social media pages.

Throughout CSW66, In order to draw more medical students into the conversation of women’s involvement in climate actions, the delegation maintained regular Twitter Space hours. Twice during CSW66, people passionate about climate justice and gender equity were able to come along and ask questions to the delegation and various guest speakers. The Twitter Space received great engagement from medical students worldwide.

The delegation also shared numerous educational posts, Instagram quizzes, and resources on social media in order to raise awareness around the urgent needs to involve women and girls in climate actions. Some of the resources the delegation shared on social media were recommended by CSW66 speakers and others by members of the delegation.

IFMSA recommendations:

Every 5 years, Methods of Work are renewed and CSW66 was the platform for their improvement. The IFMSA delegation provided UN Women with a set of recommendations regarding building capacities of youth in terms of engagement with the UN system and agreed conclusions, centralization of youth activities, and improvement of engagement between civil society and member states in digital spaces and structures of oral statements. They were sent to the designated person who collected the feedback from young attendees.

5. Youth Inclusion in CSW:

As mentioned at the beginning, during CSW66 “youth” appeared for the first time in Methods of Work, creating a precedent for further youth engagement. Through the NGOs Forum, Youth Preparatory Series was organized to expand knowledge on the priority theme and develop soft skills for advocacy. Youth also produced Youth recommendations that are described before. Their engagement was possible through self-organized groups. The IFMSA as part of the Joint Youth Working Group on Population, SRHR and Climate Change could also contribute to common efforts.

The IFMSA also organized reflection sessions after each week of CSW to collect thoughts and observations from various youth organizations and individuals. Our parallel event and Twitter Space also regarded youth inclusion in the dialogue.

During plenaries, there were a couple of youth delegates and speakers. However, due to hybrid settings, it was impossible to evaluate how many young people were included in their country's delegation as the list of delegates was not published.

6. Representation Watch Takeaways:

Representation Watch is a tool for tracking which countries received speaking time and how many certain issues were reflected in a meeting. The results presented here are from all plenary sessions:

According to the United Nations, Global South accounts for 78 countries while Global North for 61. This ratio was reflected in speaking opportunities given to member states.

28% of interventions from the Global North were given online and for Global South, this percentage was similar - 25%.

Global South and Global North:

Regional distribution:

The concerning trend is the participation of Western Pacific countries that spoke majorly online, perhaps leaving the accessibility question for this particular region.

When it comes to the attention given by regions to specific topics, the distribution presents itself as follows:

For Africa, the Americas, Europe and Western Pacific regions the most important topic was gender-sensitive climate policies, while for the EMR and South-East Asia - women in climate leadership were given the priority.

In Africa, the least spoken issues were the gender pay gap and unpaid care and domestic work. None of the representatives from the Americas mentioned the gender pay gap nor specific issues on women’s health in climate crisis. The gender pay gap was not addressed also by representatives from Western Pacific. The EMR did not tackle upon access to SRHR. South-East Asia did not reflect at all on youth involvement and women’s working conditions. Women’s working conditions were also the least spoken topic by European representatives.

The most prevalent topic was the need for gender-sensitive climate policies, followed by women in climate leadership. The least attention was given to the gender pay gap. The detailed analysis is presented below:

Topics:

The concerning trend is the participation of Western Pacific countries that spoke majorly online, perhaps leaving the accessibility question for this particular region.

When it comes to the attention given by regions to specific topics, the distribution presents itself as follows:

As the IFMSA champions the advocacy on meaningful youth engagement, the delegation kept track of the governments and non-state actors reflecting on it. The results are presented below:

This means that the region that spoke the most on youth involvement was Europe and South-East Asia did not address it at all. The only Non-State Actor who spoke about youth inclusion was the IFMSA. Further analysis of climate-related issues presents as follows: