Sometimes when UU’s find each other, it clicks. When I, as a member of Unitarian Universalist for Just Economic Communities (UUJEC), joined the International Convocation of UU Women (ICUUW) in New York to take part in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March of 2023, it clicked. Women together addressing the challenges of our time takes courage and perseverance. In these dark times, truth telling is resistance, and it is happening every day.
A Californian, I had not been to the UN in NYC since taking my pre-teen children there to marvel at the Avenue of the Flags and the very existence of the UN itself. Now decades later and graying, I was met at La Guardia Airport by ICUUW’s gracious President, Karen Kortsch. She guided me, luggage and all, through a maze of New York subways and streets, and later mentored my initial participation with the UN’s CSW. I found it engaging and a bit overwhelming. The events themselves included eye-opening sessions and memorable side-events that exposed gendered abuses of women around the world, discussed the brutal defamation of an ethical female journalist, and addressed the Taliban’s subjugation of our sisters in Afghanistan. None of it just.
I was impressed by efforts to engage internationally at the United Nations on behalf of justice, and delighted that ICUUW brought UUs from around the world together to further mutual understanding. Then in April, the ICUUW took the step to commit itself to institutional peacebuilding with the passage of its 4th Convo Declaration of Peace. That sealed it.
This step was necessary for the protection of women and girls subject to conflicts, as they are disproportionately affected when crisis-related hardships exacerbate pre-existing inequities. Such inequities are even more evident in the face of climate change and forced migrations. But as UU women, they did not stop there, and called for the inclusion and empowerment of women’s voices as essential to building sustainable peace as part of UN’s typically male-dominated negotiations and actions. Amen to that. We, women, must join the conversation!