Breathe
By Leticia Bonifaz
Two years ago, I joined a United Nations body after being elected as one of the members of the committee in charge of seeing that the countries of the world eradicate discrimination against women known as CEDAW. I arrived in Geneva after COVID prevented our physical presence at the Palais des Nations in February and June 2021. I joined excited by the mere thought that I would be able to have a global impact on improving the situation of women who continue to suffer discrimination despite the fact that for 40 years this specialized body has done much to advance. My first period as a member was intense: all newness, all learning. Twenty-two colleagues from all over the world. Each one a specialist in gender issues and knowledgeable about her region. When I arrived, most were African, today most are Asian. Each one of us normally sees a piece of the world and, with the exchange among all of us, we try to understand the totality of the state of things on the planet.
Although we have a specific mission, we cannot stop being immersed in what is happening outside our particular areas of interest. In these 2 years, we have been touched by several coups d'état in Africa, the one in Burkina Faso directly affected one of our colleagues. Then we were surprised by the start of a new war: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is dragging on with no sign of an early solution. We were hit by the relentless earthquake that affected Turkey and Lebanon.
