The chatter that has dominated both coffee-break discussions and high-level pronouncements at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is of a global and orchestrated “backlash” against women’s rights.

The new Trump administration, and recent sweeping cuts to USAID program funding, has undoubtedly contributed to the heightened level of concern among many of the CSW69 participants at this global gathering of diplomats, activists and policy makers taking place at UN headquarters in New York from March 10-21. The name “Trump” falls heavily from as many lips as the word “backlash.” But talk of the rollback of rights is not new. 

In 2024, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres used his opening remarks to CSW68 to warn that “patriarchy is far from vanquished; it is regaining ground.”

“Women and girls are also facing a war on their fundamental rights at home and in their communities. Autocrats and populists are promoting what they call ‘traditional values’ to attack women’s sexual and reproductive rights,” said Guterres.

Much of the work of the annual CSW meeting takes place at the secondary level of the side and parallel events organized by member state delegations in conjunction with non-governmental organizations (NGO). It is here that the disquiet is most apparent. A quick search of the CSW website list of side events shows that the word “backlash” is used multiple times, as well as “anti-gender” and “patriarchal social norms.”

A March 11 event, co-organized by the permanent representations of Belgium and Mexico to the UN and the International Labour Organization, was entitled “Addressing the backlash: Pushing forward to secure sexual, reproductive, health and labour rights.” The program notes for the event state that “sexual and reproductive health rights face the fiercest backlash by anti-gender movements.”

A panelist representing the Latin American branch of the organization Catholics for the Right to Decide spoke at a March 17 side event, “Reclaim Families: A Feminist and Human Rights Approach to Family Policy,” and said her region has witnessed how “religious fundamentalisms are strategically integrated into neo-fascist projects around the world, taking action to maintain the white supremacist, pro-natalist, cis-heteronormative, Christian family model.”

“In particular, fundamentalist Christian groups are strongly deploying hate speech as part of a political program that manages to mobilize emotions and privatize the domestic sphere, attempting to place it outside of politics.”

Fear of the so-called backlash has rebounded on the pro-life organizations who send delegates to CSW and other UN events like the annual meeting of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

In 2021, a decision was made by NGO/CSW, the group that coordinates the CSW parallel events, to demand an attestation as a prerequisite for participation in those events. Participants must both commit to “respect the diversity of languages, opinions and expertise” and to the idea that “sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, transphobia, global North domination and other institutionalized forms of oppression exist.” 

But it is in the question-and-answer periods and hallway discussions that pro-life delegates are sensing a rising hostility towards their opinions, even their very presence, at the conference.

This year Campaign Life Coalition sent nine youth delegates to CSW. Josie Luetke, Campaign Life’s director of education and advocacy, told The Catholic Register that part of its goal in attending the conference is to monitor and track what is being said by delegates and activists.

“We try to cover as much ground as possible. We go over the list of side and parallel events in advance and identify ones that are relevant to our issues, and then we divvy up our delegates to ensure that we get the most important ones covered,” said Luetke.

But Campaign Life is not just there to take notes; it also makes its presence known by its questions.

“I think overall we're looking to build relationships with people who share similar values but also to disrupt the narrative,” said Luetke. “So many of these people are walking into CSW thinking that it’s going to be a monolith that everyone is on the same page on these issues.”

Those questions have begun to irritate organizers. The youth delegates have noted a pattern of being refused entrance to side events when it becomes known they are a pro-life delegate, being asked to leave an event or panelists refusing to answer their questions.

In 2024, Luetke was filmed as she asked CSW delegate Nahanni Fontaine, Manitoba NDP Minister for Families, a question about Manitoba buffer zone legislation. Fontaine then posted that footage to Instagram with the comment, “I never would have thought I’d be approached… at the UN Status of Women Commission — a body dedicated to the rights of women, girls and gender-diverse folks, including reproductive justice — by an anti-choice protester, but here we are.”

The “monolith” of which Luetke speaks is one that has been decades in the making.

This year is a particularly important one for the CSW as it marks 30 years since the fourth World Conference on Women at which the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted. Every five years since the adoption of the declaration, CSW sessions have engaged in reporting on the progress, or regress, made in realizing the goals outlined by the multilateral agreement. 

Mary Ann Glendon, lawyer, Harvard professor and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, led the Vatican delegation at the Beijing conference in 1995. In her 2024 memoir, In the Courts of Three Popes, Glendon notes that “some delegations from developing countries arrived at sessions involving sexual and reproductive matters with position papers that were identical to one another and whose language resembled the statements of Western abortion rights groups.”

Glendon writes that it was a coalition of European Union delegates who had “taken up leadership on the sexual and abortion rights front” and that the coalition’s “relentless focus” on those issues had “brought progress on other issues to a near standstill.”

Perhaps the most memorable and best-known statement of the Beijing conference was the one delivered by then-U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton in the opening speech. Clinton declared, “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”

Glendon calls Clinton’s rallying cry a “misleading slogan.”

“Human rights are women’s rights — they belong to everyone, everywhere. But not everything that has been called a woman’s right in one or more countries is recognized as a universal right.” 

This year, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth of Canada Marci Ien leads the Canadian delegation to CSW69. Ien has stated the primary focus of Canada’s advocacy at the commission is “women’s empowerment and the advancement of 2SLGBTQI+ rights.”