We write to you on behalf of feminist and women's rights organizations participating in and observing the Generation Equality Forum process and as civil society organizations engaged in the Generation Equality Action Coalitions to express the concerns that we have to date with the process.

We appreciate the Core Group’s commitment to equal and robust civil society representation within the Generation Equality initiatives, and particularly the Action Coalitions, which we acknowledge is a new way of engaging that has strong potential. In order to fulfill this potential, we must always keep power differentials in mind as we embark on this process and to do that, we need to be in dialogue about the rollout of these structures and processes. In order for the Action Coalition’s to meet their goals of truly achieving transformative change for gender equality, it is imperative that civil society voices and experiences be centered throughout the process.

To meet this objective we wish to highlight a few key points to uphold through the rest of the Action Coalition process:

Accessible: The Action Coalitions must be inclusive of all members of civil society. In order to achieve this objective that means that the workshops and activities of the Action Coalitions must be accessible.

Accessibility includes not only adequate translation services but also closed captioning and interpretation. In addition, written materials need to be provided well in advance of all meetings, ideally at least one week. This improves the active and meaningful participation of a wider range of people, including people with visual disabilities, people who need translation or language support, or people new to international, multi-stakeholder collaboration.

We were alarmed at the fact that the initial Action Coalition workshops were not accessible to all of the participating leaders and look forward to working with the Action Coalition leads moving forward to ensure this does not happen again. This is a helpful resource to assess how accessible a digital meeting is: https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/07/are-your-virtual-meetings-accessible-for-people-with-disabilities-start-with-this-checklist/.  

Inclusive: We recognize that the strength of the Action Coalitions will come from their global multi-stakeholder nature. In order to harness that strength, meetings must be scheduled in ways that enable the full participation of leaders from all time zones.

Recognizing that all partners are equal, the same groups or individuals should not always be asked to sacrifice their rest or time in order to participate. The Action Coalitions cannot and should not revolve around New York.

Moreover, the Secretariat will need to think sensitively and carefully and possibly deploy resources to ensure that women and girls in all their diversity can participate as leaders. This includes ensuring proper safeguarding for any leaders under 18, as well as creating spaces that are safe for marginalized groups, such as trans women. As with all aspects of planning for the Generation Equality Forum, all stakeholders must be encouraged to understand and dismantle power differentials.

Collaborative: Some Action Coalition leaders have been involved in the Generation Equality Forum activities since its inception, but it is important to note that some may be new to the Generation Equality Forum process and / or international multi-stakeholder processes in general. In order to ensure that all leaders' opinions are valued and respected, the process must be fully collaborative and build ownership.

This means that documents that have been created before the establishment of the Action Coalition leadership structure should not be introduced and expected to be adopted. All leaders must have the time to contribute to all of the documents and outputs of the Action Coalitions. To enable all stakeholders to engage with the ACs with the same level of knowledge, it is important to provide a proper induction of the previous processes, including minutes from the Design Sprint workshops minutes.

Moreover, the timeline as previously provided during the initial Action Coalition workshops do not adequately include the appropriate amount of time for wider civil society consultations. We do not expect that civil society leaders in the Action Coalitions are speaking as individual organizations but rather as representatives of broad constituencies. In order to properly confer with these constituencies it is important that the timeline factor in adequate time to do so, including by providing a full calendar of meetings well in advance so that leaders can create consultative processes. For this reason it is also important to provide materials and agendas at least one week in advance as mentioned above.

In addition, the blueprints for the Action Coalitions should not be published without proper consultation with broader civil society input. Civil society outside of the selected leaders should have the opportunity to provide input throughout the blueprint creation process and not just at the end.

Open Communication: The Action Coalition themes have always been understood to be interconnected. In order to live up to the promises of ensuring full collaboration between Action Coalitions, including between their leaders, there must be a mechanism put in place to encourage this.

The Generation Equality Action Coalitions provide a unique opportunity to truly create a sustainable infrastructure to achieve transformative change. We all understand that this is no easy feat and will require an immense amount of time and resources from all parties involved in the process. To ensure that we use this opportunity to the fullest extent it is vital that civil society is included in all aspects of the process with full transparency and that civil society concerns are adequately valued and addressed.

We look forward to continuing to work with the Core Group of the Generation Equality Forum to ensure that we meet these issues at the early stages and make the Action Coalitions and the Forums truly inclusive and momentous. With so much at stake in an increasingly polarised, unequal world, for member states to be ‘gender champions’ we must overcome our limitations to build something strong that can help break the restrictions we have had to accept in the official intergovernmental spaces.

The full letter can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LtFDj64W9tIxneyiX2EDZW3Mn4Ev-HJvsQshQYs-yZI/edit?usp=sharing