Judging by the number of side events and actors involved in the CSW without a pass for the official sessions, one could think that, in a way, what happens around the CSW is sometimes more important and interesting than what happens inside the commission itself.  I´ve been having that feeling the whole week and I was fully convinced on Saturday 26^th when I was lucky to attend the meeting on ‘On the road again’: Feminist visions and strategies towards Busan and beyond, at the UN Millennium Hotel.

During two days, women activists from WIDE, AWID, Netrights, FEMNET, Articulación Feminista Marcosur, and other networks and women´s groups with a long record of feminist advocacy met to share information and strategize in the run up to the IV International Conference on Aid Effectiveness which will take place next November in Busan, Korea.  You may think that November is far away, but the stakes are so high, that women´s groups decided to start preparing early enough so we do not make the same mistakes that in the road to Accra (III Conference on Aid Effectiveness).

Although the theme of the CSW this year has been “Access of Women and Girls to Science and Technology”, economic empowerment is being widely identified in many of the sessions held during these days as a key strategy to foster independence and the right of choice.

NGOs, international organizations, governments have been described as major actors to interact in fostering economic empowerment of women. Following this argument, the African Union organized a side event in the CSW under the title “Economic Empowerment of Youth and Women in Africa through Science, Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship to meet Africa’s development.”