Working, Migrant and Oppressed Women: Reject False Solutions and Fight for our Future!
The United Nations General Assembly is convening again this September, amid an ever-worsening and polarized world. Under the theme “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations that Delivers for All,” the UN will try to win back the peoples' trust which they lost in the first place due to the lack of substantial change that has come from the UN. While the heads of state and other government officials pay lip service to the economic, climate, military and social crisis we are facing, we in IWA US are uplifting that genuine change comes from the people getting organized and fighting for their communities!
We have seen over the past year, especially through the UN's Commission on the Status of Women and the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) that the UN is no stranger to the suffering of the broad masses of the world. They provide endless reports and research on these topics, but the solutions they propose, especially in the form of their "Sustainable Development Goals," always fall short of genuinely addressing women's concerns.
The UN Women organization states that 1 in 10 women globally live in extreme poverty, but the solutions the UN presents to lift women out of poverty is to integrate them into a "digital economy." In practice, this simply means allowing AI and tech companies to expand their labor force to women in rural areas. In effect, this serves to amass more profits for these tech conglomerates, especially corporations from the Global North, while most of the countries that suffer from widespread unemployment lack national industries that could create sustainable, long-term jobs. This past May, the UN Women released an article stating that wars are increasingly being fought in densely populated areas, with more than 675 million women and girls living within 50km of an active war zone. And yet, the UN's Women, Peace and Security agenda only uses women as a bargaining chip for "peace," emphasizing placing women within war rooms to quell resistance movements rather than addressing the root causes of imperialist wars and the use of state forces to carry out violence against women around the world.
Despite claiming that addressing the issues of women and girls is a priority, especially those in war zones, the United Nations platforms warmongers like Trump and the U.S.'s security strategy. In his address to the UN on September 22, Trump vowed to "annihilate Iran," invade Cuba, and touted the "spoils" of oil won from attacking Venezuela. The US's aggression against sovereign countries will only further the economic and political instability and violence that women and girls face.
As IWA US, we know that to genuinely uplift and defend women, you must first address the exploitation and oppression they face at a systemic level. As the UN brags about the potential appointment of a woman Secretary General for the first time in it's 80 year history, we know that gender liberation is not achieved simply by appointing a woman to a position of power. The appointment of a woman UN Secretary General will not change the conditions of working, peasant, indigenous or oppressed women across the world. If the UN's aim is truly to "Restore Trust" and "Deliver for All" they will first need to address the root causes of women's oppression. If the UN wants to genuinely address the issues of women, they should first look to those who are most impacted by their frameworks and get their input.
We call on all women to reject false solutions and to fight for genuine change. IWA US uplifts the true change-makers of history -- the working women around the world who are leading their communities in fighting for national and social liberation in the face of imperialism and war. IWA US member organizations have been on the ground, organizing women to fight against labor trafficking, wage theft, to fight for their housing rights and to have their basic needs met. Migrant women are now forming their own organizations, from within ICE detention center walls, to demand justice for themselves and all migrants even after they are freed from detention. IWA members have been growing the women's mass movement against imperialist war, militarism and genocide by exposing how violence against women and children is used as a tool of military occupation, cutting city contracts with war profiteers like Skydio drones, and joining thousands across the world in opposing the use of AI & Tech for war.
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