By: Susan O’Malley
IFBPWC UN Representative 
NGO CSW/NY, Chair ex officio 
Professor Emerita, City University of New York 

UNChair@nfbpwc.orgsusanomalley4@gmail.com   

Do register for the NGO CSW68 Forum!  

It is free and all events are online. (Some events are both in person and online.) The Forum runs from March 10 (Consultation Day), the day after the IFBPW Summit (March 8-9), to March 20. It runs 24 hours each day to accommodate all time zones.  [Our NGO’s official name at the UN is the International Federation of Business and 

Professional Women, not BPW-International.] Go to the NGO CSW/NY’s webpage and 

register for the CSW68 Forum so that you will have access online to all events, including parallel events, conversation circles, booths, morning briefings, and the webpage for each event. This year there will be an Artisan Fair held at the Armenian Center. 

You can browse the website now - it is much easier than last year. The calendar of events should be posted soon.  If you have a question, go to NGO CSW/NY CSW68 to find the answer. There are many tutorials to answer your questions and to explain how to get involved with advocating for the 6 recommendations that NGO CSW is suggesting for the negotiated Outcome Document. 

The event I am organizing with Marilou McPhedran, Senator Canada, is “Addressing Poverty: Basic Livable Income Bills” sponsored by Feminist Parliamentarians and co-sponsored by the International Federation of Business and Professional Women. It is on Tuesday, 12 March, at 12:30. 

Hope to see you there on Zoom.

Embrace the possible. That’s the call of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a blueprint for a better world. We don’t have to wait for the future we want—we can create it right now. Everyone can join the global movement for change.

ActNow is the United Nations campaign to inspire people to act for the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Goals can improve life for all of us. Cleaner air. Safer cities. Equality. Better jobs. These issues matter to everyone. But progress is too slow. We have to act, urgently, to accelerate changes that add up to better lives on a healthier planet.

What happens when millions of people act together for our common future? A lot. Join the campaign to learn more— and do more.

To read more of the article, CLICK HERE.  

“We can prevail.

If we act now.

If we act together.

If we keep our promise to the billions of people whose hopes, dreams and futures you hold in your hands.

Now is the time.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres at #UNGA’s SDG Summit, where countries committed to accelerating progress on the #GlobalGoals for a better, more sustainable future for everyone.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1140857

 (Source:  BPW International Facebook post of September 20, 2023; repost of United Nations September 17, 2023 post)

By: Susan O’Malley
IFBPWC UN Representative, NGO CSW/NY, Chair ex officio
Professor Emerita, City University of New York
UNChair@nfbpwc.orgsusanomalley4@gmail.com

 

The UN devoted the weekend of September 16-17 to discussing the state of the implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how Member States and NGOs can scale up their attempts to fulfill them by 2030.

Many promises were made by Member States, both financial and actions to be taken. The object is to “leave nobody behind.” In fact, though, COVID has limited the progress of fulfilling the SDGs. The UN Sustainable Development Goals Report for 2023 is available on the UN website.

Attending the Action Weekend were 3 IFBPW members: Tess Mateo, Thalita Veronica Goncalves e Silva from Brazil, and Susan O’Malley. 

Tess Mateo is Senior Advisor to AQAL Capital and the United Nations on Gender and Climate; and Managing Director of CXCatalysts, which develops public private partnerships in clean energy, water, sustainable food, and health.  She is an IFBPW UN Representative.

Thalita Veronica Gonclaves e Silva, from Brazil, is a Public State Defender (lawyer), and a member of the IFBPW Human Rights Committee. 

Susan O’Malley is Professor Emerita, English, City University of NY, past chair of NGO CSW/NY, and an IFBPW UN Representative. She is also the UN Representative for Widows for Peace Through Democracy and plays the cello in the UN Orchestra.

In the photo, we are in Conference 4 at the UN just before the Closing Meeting in the ECOSOC Chamber on 17 September.  Susan is in the blue Climate Action tee-shirt because she had just come from the Eliminate Fossil Fuels March.

This photo is of Patricia L. Bradley (Women’s Missionary Society AMEC), Beth Dehghan (WomenNC), and Susan O’Malley (IFBPW) who represented many NGOs Rally.

United Nations Report By:  Susan O’Malley, IFBPWC UN Representative, NGO CSW/NY, Chair ex officio Professor Emerita, City University of New York, UNChair@nfbpwc.orgsusanomalley4@gmail.com  

On August 23, 2023, a number of NGO CSW/NY executive committee members past and present travelled by train to a Nature Preserve and Trail named for Esther Hymer in Shrewsbury, New Jersey where she lived with her family from 1941 to 2001 when she died at age 102.  It is a lovely place as you can see from the photos.  Esther Hymer was an important foremother for IFBPW, the first chair of NGO CSW/NY, and important for the formation of the UN.  We have been working on writing the 50-year history of NGO CSW/NY.  It should be completed in September.  To read more about Esther Hymer's life I recommend Esther Hymer A Bus to 42nd Street by Sylvia G. Perry and Livia M. Ricci. 

Pictured Left:  Houry Geudelekian, Ivy Koeck, Pamela Morgan, Susan O'Malley, Devan Zingler

Pictured Right: Esther Hymer Nature Preserve and Trail

 

Below is the draft of the Esther Hymer Chapter 1972-1982 for the NGO CSW/NY History.

1972-1982 | ESTHER HYMER

In 1998 on the occasion of Esther Wanner Hymer’s 100th birthday UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote, “For half a century, as the representative of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) at the UN, you actively promoted the concerns of women. Your untiring efforts influenced almost all of the resolutions of the General Assembly and its subsidiary bodies which affect the status of women.” The previous year SG Annan had also  honored Hymer: “Still active in promoting women’s equality, Mrs. Hymer represents the best tradition of NGO activism in the United Nations.”

Born in Chicago in 1898, Hymer marched for the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in 1920.  Her involvement with the work of the National Committee for Lasting Peace (1942-1951) led her to the June 1945 conference in San Francisco that established the United Nations. At the conference Hymer became aware of the potential influence of NGOs. She became Director of International Relations for IFBPW and its NGO Representative to the UN for 60 years. IFBPW was granted ECOSOC consultative status in 1947.

Interestingly, there is no reference to NGO CSW/NY and Esther Hymer in Esther W. Hymer, A Bus to 42nd St. by Sylvia G. Perry & Livia M Ricci. Nor is there a reference to NGO CSW/NY in the descriptions of the contents in the 50 boxes of Hymer’s papers housed in the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, MA.

When the International Women’s Year was set for 1975, Esther Hymer was elected Chairperson of the NGO Committee of the International Women’s Year, a position she held from 1972-1982 (Perry & Ricci, 34). In 1972 Helvi Sipila from Finland was appointed the first woman UN Assistant Secretary-General. Hymer chaired the 85-member NGO Committee on the Decade of Women. In 1975 the first UN World Conference on Women was held in Mexico City, and A World Plan of Action was adopted. INSTRAW, an Institute for Training and Research for Women, was established after the Mexico City Conference; in 1976 UNIFEM, a Voluntary Fund to Support the Decade for Women, was established. 

In 1980 at the second UN World Conference on Women in Copenhagen, which Hymer attended, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was signed by 75 Member States making it legally binding. CEDAW had been unanimously adopted by the 34th session of the UN General Assembly. 

During Esther Hymer’s 10-year term as Chair of NGO CSW/NY, she was an integral part of the NGO women’s movement to increase the representation and participation of women in the UN. From 1972-1982 NGO CSW/NY was not a membership organization with monthly meetings and the yearly NGO CSW Forum with hundreds of parallel events. NGO CSW/NY was just getting started. Esther Hymer died on April 1, 2001, at age 102.

There is a Nature Preserve and trail named for Esther Hymer in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where Esther and her family lived from 1941.