Dear friends,

We express our heartfelt solidarity o­n the auspicious occasion of 95th International Working Women's Day for the better world, peaceful, prosperous, justful world. We are grateful and thankful to our entire international arena to supporting to people's move against king's step. We believe that your solidarity will strengthen our activism to end autocracy. We humbly request again to pressurize the government to release our chair Bidya Devi Bhandari and all the arrested and detained leaders and activists.

In solidarity !

Sujita Shakya

Chief

Central Department of Foreign Affairs

ANWAFor pictures, please follow this linkhttp://freenepal.blogspot.com/2005/03/photo-anti-monarch-rally.html

A news article by Olivia H. Tripon, reporting from the 49th session of the UN Commission o­n the Status of Women in New York, with support from UNFPA.----------------------------------------------------Implementing Beijing and CEDAWBy Olivia H. TriponWomen's Feature ServiceNew York, March 9 (WFS) -

At a panel discussion o­n the 49th session of the Commission o­n the Status of Women, the synergies between two international instruments, the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action and the Convention for the Elimination of All Kinds of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) were highlighted.CEDAW, accepted by 179 countries is the principal treaty protecting women's human rights. "However, CEDAW and other human rights treaties have not been adequately used to ensure action by states in line with the commitments adopted at Beijing and at its five year review in 2000," said Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at a session last March 3.

The Linkage Caucus represents a diverse group of NGOs from all regions of the world gathered at the 49th Session of the Commission o­n the Status of Women.As long-standing supporters of and advocates for the United Nations and the multilateral system, we believe that the UN Member States and the UN leadership need to take strong action to advance gender equality within the UN system and to make the promotion and realization of women's empowerment and human rights a priority.Based o­n the discussion at this 49th Session of the CSW reviewing implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, we note that the UN system needs both more effective, results-driven gender mainstreaming, and effective, adequately resourced women's units to bring us closer to implementing the Beijing Platform, to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, to ending the pandemic of violence against women, and to reflecting the UN's unequivocal commitment to the world's women in all their diversity