The third Meeting of the Open-Ended Working Group for the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (OEWG3, SAICM) took place from 2-4 April 2019 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Approximately 350 delegates attended, including representatives of governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and industry. The MSP Institute was there, working to increase attention on gender issues, providing information and suggestions on how to integrate gender in a future framework on chemicals and waste.
During the meeting, OEWG3 participants assessed SAICM’ progress and activities regarding the emerging policy issues and other issues of concern, discussed the sound management of chemicals and waste beyond 2020, prepared for ICCM5 and considered the planned activities and draft budget of SAICM secretariat (see ENB summary here).
We presented our new brochure “Gender & SAICM Beyond 2020. How to create a gender-just healthy planet” at our information booth, as well as other information material and policy suggestions. We were very pleased to see that all our material was picked up, and we had a lot of inspiring conversations.
On the second day of OEWG3, we invited all interested stakeholders to a first informal meeting on women and gender. The goal was to get to know each other, exchange experiences and to think about how we can create a gender-just healthy planet. Seventeen interested SAICM stakeholders from governments, NGOs and IGOs attended the meeting. We had a fruitful discussion and brainstorming on the necessity of the integration of gender in SAICM. We also collected concrete ideas on what we can do to make SAICM Beyond 2020 more gender-sensitive, e.g. organizing side-events, publishing publications, compiling information on gender/women stories at country levels or working with the network of women environment ministers. The group agreed that there should be a next women and gender meeting at IP3 in Bangkok in September/October and created a new mailing list to stay in touch and continue discussions. We are very happy that so many delegates are interested to work together on gender and we hope that this work will help to achieve the full integration of gender in SAICM Beyond 2020.
The new mailing list “Women and Gender @ SAICM” is open to everyone working in the SAICM Process and interested in women and gender topics. If you want to be part of it, please send an email to: anna.holthaus[at]msp-institute.org
There is not much time left until 2020 – let’s integrate gender now!
Upcoming international meetings include:
- IP3 – 30th Sept – 4th Oct 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand
- IP4 – Spring 2020 in Bucharest, Romania
- ICCM5 – 5th – 9th October 2020 in Berlin, Germany
Thank you and best regards,
Anna and Minu from the MSP Institute