Feminist Brainstorming and Inter-Generational Dialogue on Current Issues Facing South Asia

5thand 6thMarch 2020

2020 marks the 25thanniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It also marks the 75thanniversary of the United Nations, the 20thanniversary of the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the 5thanniversary of the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the 10thanniversary of the creation of UN Women.

The 2020 confluence of anniversariesprovides an opportunity to take stockof the significant progress that has been achieved in the implementation of womens rights, to discuss the deep chasms of inequality that still persist across our public and private life, and explore the increasing resistance against the feminist movement and those who defend its values, in a world that has changed immensely since 1995.

The ICES in partnership with the Women & Media Collective and UN Women, broughttogether a group of older feminist thinkers, and young and emerging feminists from the South Asian region, for a brainstorming and an intergenerational dialogue, to explore how an engagement could be sustainedwith women throughout the region,on a number of contemporary challenges.

The meeting generated a Colombo Declaration that will feed into other civil society convenings within the context of Beijing+25 and other anniversaries, and also into theGeneration Equality Forum in the summer of 2020, which is envisaged as a global public conversation for urgent action and accountability for gender equality.