Revolution, Not False Solutions! Debunking the Myths of the UN and UN Women.
IWA-US Analysis Statement on the 80th UN General Assembly
The 2025 United Nations (UN) General Assembly marks the 30th anniversary of the “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action”, the 25th anniversary of “Women, Peace and Security”, and the 80th anniversary of the UN. This year, UN Women led the initiative to reaffirm and recommit to the Beijing Action Agenda, a multi-lateral agreement among 108 governments to mobilize investment to achieve “gender equality, rights, and empowerment of all women and girls”. For the last 30 years, the UN has made declarations on the importance of “gender equality” and “women’s empowerment” in the arena of “establishing world peace, development, and human rights”. Heads of state and representatives of various governments joined the general debate and hosted high-level side meetings to address this year’s theme.
As the International Women’s Alliance (IWA), these UN declarations pay lip service to oppressed women of the world, as there is no genuine action to address the root causes of the exploitation of women globally. The UN is not designed to represent our struggle nor does it advance the women’s movement; the Beijing Declaration is not a revolutionary roadmap, in fact, it is a neoliberal scheme that totes “progress, accountability, and action” by viewing women as expendable investments for economic development. The UN is an agent of global monopoly capitalism, or U.S. Imperialism. It pretends to slap the hand of fascist governments, while colluding with them to usher in corporate investors for land deals and create access to economic zones that lead to plunder, extraction, and the forcible displacement of people from land and livelihood.
What is the UN and UN Women saying about women? What is the reality?
351 million women and girls will still live in extreme poverty by 2030.
The ruling elite want us to believe that poverty can be resolved by providing women more equitable tech and opportunities to start their own businesses. investing in women’s Equality is smart economics...
...In reality, the economic crisis continues to worsen. imperialism is a parasitic process in decay as it feeds off of the plunder of resources from the global south while displacing women from land and livelihood.
676 million [women] live within deadly conflict (highest since 1990s). Women and girls bear the brunt of violence.
The ruling elite want us to believe that women are weak and need protecting. This justifies war and militarization, and in the inevitability of conflict, women are collateral damage…
...In reality, women of the oppressed classes are a powerful force for the resistance to wars. Exploited women are a critical part of the movement to end wars of aggression around the world and to win just and lasting peace.
“In the final five-year stretch before the 2030 deadline of the UN SDGs, it is urgent to accelerate action and investment.”
The ruling elite want us to believe that UN frameworks and national action plans give women a seat at the table and thus lead to peace, empowerment, and equality…
...In reality, investment in women under the current system only exacerbates exploitation, labor trafficking, and forced migration and provides foreign corporations with super-profits.
“Our daughters have watched their mothers become the first female presidents... Today we celebrate these courageous women, women who have paved the way forward for us.”
The ruling elite want us to believe that women presidents have singlehandedly paved the way to progress and are inspirational heroes for girls aspiring for change, equality, and progress…
...In reality, women heads of state do not advance Equality or eliminate gender oppression. The true heroes of society are working and oppressed women who are part of the ongoing struggle for genuine equality, national liberation, and just peace!
What is the UN’s stance on Migration, Forced Displacement, and Genocide?
This week, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) convened to discuss the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM), adopted in 2018, the first intergovernmental agreement “to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner”. This meeting was co-chaired by Maria Theresa Lazaro and Hans Leo Cacdac, Philippine Secretaries of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW). This further symbolizes the Philippines as a model example for how it has institutionalized its migrant labor as its #1 export from the country.
Since its adoption, the GCM has set a precedent to broker and systematize the trafficking of cheap labor between member states or sending and receiving countries. Labor export policies under the guise of “development” facilitate the forced migration of millions from their home countries to fill the labor needs in capitalist countries, while providing sending countries (mainly from the global south) with remittances to stabilize their GDP. This is not “opportunity” or genuine livelihood, this is exploitation and family separation.
“It is very frustrating that the DFA Secretary Lazaro is in the UN right now saying that the issues of Filipino migrants are important to her, saying that the Philippines is committed to opposing the attacks on migrants. But in reality she is paving the way for more neoliberal trade agreements that will direct more migrants through the pipeline to be exploited overseas. We’re here protesting and taking the streets, uplifting the worker’s voices, saying we aren’t going to stand for the continued forced migration of our people! End the exploitation of all migrants of all nationalities!” - April, GABRIELA USA
In a separate high-level session marking the 30th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, DFA Secretary Lazaro also made claims of the Philippines advances in women-led peacebuilding. “You can count on the Philippines champion for advancing gender equality and as a driving force for peace, justice and sustainable development,” said Lazaro.
“How dare the UN say they care about gender equality when they are the ones setting up the stage for more and more women to be exploited!” - April, GABRIELA USA
We will also never forget the history of the UNGA of 1947, where the lives of millions of Palestinians were determined by heads of state and government entities, excluding the voices of the Palestinian people. This gave way to the partition of Palestine, with 55% of the land allotted to the zionist project of “Israel”. This land theft condemned the Palestinian people across all of historic Palestine to decades of forcible displacement, plunder, occupation, and the total seizure of Gaza that we see today.
The Zionist regime, backed and funded by the US and its allies, is accelerating its genocide of the Palestinian people and theft of Palestinian land on the world stage. Despite many walking out during Netanyahu’s speech this year as a show of “solidarity”, this was a mere gesture, in contrast to the people mobilizing outside the UN calling for Netanyahu’s arrest.
“As New Yorkers, we are enraged that a genocidal war criminal was welcomed with open arms to regurgitate Zionist lies and wash over the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. We must take matters into our own hands, the hands of people of conscience. We march to shout the truth, that everything the US, the Zionist regime, and the UN does is corrupt, depraved, and unacceptable. From the streets of Times Square to the UN building, we show our people power because we know these state delegates will not meaningfully put a stop to the crimes of imperialism and colonialism in Palestine and across the world. The movement for Palestinian liberation will continue until freedom.
Palestine is a feminist issue and anti-imperialist feminism is a people's politic, not a state's. We condemn UN complacency and find it as deplorable as that of the US and the Zionist state. As anti-imperialist feminists, we also see through this diplomatic ploy of “recognizing” the State of Palestine. We affirm that true national liberation comes from the masses and popular resistance across all sectors of society.”
– Palestinian Feminist Collective, New York Membership
The “two-state solution” pushed by the UN today, contingent on a complete disarmament of Palestinian resistance and permanent theft of Palestinian land, leaves Palestinians with no way to defend themselves against the most militarized occupying force in the world. The two-state “solution” is on par with imperial diplomatic strategy, which prioritizes maintaining a status quo of controlled subjugation over true liberation for people of the Third World. Efforts like this implicitly allow the Zionist regime to continue operating as it did prior to the current accelerated genocide, while simultaneously weakening and disarming the Palestinian liberation movement. We recognize this move for what it is – an attempt to assuage those interested in state-building rather than true liberation, in service of a colonial, capitalist, and imperialist world order. Palestinian liberation will not come because colonial and imperialist states’ “recognition” of the current genocide or Palestinian statehood at the expense of resistance, it will come despite them.
It is staunchly clear that time and again, the UN gives platform to war criminals - from Netanyahu to Trump, and does not give platform to the most impacted, oppressed, or exploited peoples in society. We see the fallacy of UN plans and declarations when they fail to take action in the plight of migrant women in the US, fail to intervene in the genocide leading to the elimination of generations in Gaza, and when they praise female presidents who are more interested in holding state power than addressing the roots of armed conflict among its people. The UN and its platform of UN Women is not a tool of progress, but rather a tool that advances the US imperialist agenda and its arrangement with puppet governments, and is operating by its design.
IWA is the genuine multi-lateral grassroots women’s alliance dedicated to fighting for liberation!
In NY, where the UNGA is hosted annually, women and migrants are contributing to campaigns to end the 24-hour workday for caregivers. Currently, it is legal for caregivers to work a 24-hour workday in the state of New York, for meager wages as low as $13 a day. These grave labor violations have resulted in wage theft, workplace injuries, and violence against working women.
Women are also organizing against discriminatory housing policies that deny single moms housing because they are viewed as unreliable renters as single income earners. Landlords currently have the ability to increase rent costs for single women with kids and apply rules that make it easier for eviction, on top of threatening to call the police or ICE to further intimidate upon delays in payment. Migrant women and asylum seekers due to status take up precarious jobs, aren’t offered regular 26-28-hr jobs and are often paid below minimum wage, which contributes to a cycle of housing instability. Campaigns for dignified housing, against rent discrimination and to empower women to know their rights are among the many livelihood campaigns led by working women in the region.
As IWA, we assert:
The rise of corrupt and fascist leaders from the U.S. to our home countries is in response to the growing strength of people’s resistance in countries across the world.
Anti-imperialist nations, as well as movements asserting national independence and sovereignty, are the biggest obstacle to the complete plunder of our homelands.
There is no genuine liberation for women and lgbtq+ without oppressed peoples joining the struggle to liberate our homelands!
From Indonesia to Nepal, to the Philippines, to the U.S., pro-people and anti-government corruption protests are growing! Women, children, and youth, among all sectors of society, are flooding the streets clamoring for system change! This is where women must immerse, organize, and mobilize. It is the organizing of peasant women taking up arms to defend their land, garment workers resisting neoliberal free trade policies, and migrant women demanding justice for the abandonment by their home governments that are the true makers of history.
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