A look at that convention as well as three other U.N.-related anniversaries—the first for the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees, the 20th for the passage of the Security Council Resolution 1325, which addressed the specific impacts of armed conflict on women and girls and the 23rd of the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace held in Beijing, were the major themes at a conference titled  “Why the U.N. Matters,” held at Fordham Law School on Nov. 25. 

The conference was organized by the Fordham Institute for Women and Girls, the Fordham Graduate School of Social Service, and the International Health Awareness Network (IHAN). GSS and IHAN also sponsored a student essay contest, and the top two student papers were presented at the event.

Yung Hsien Ng Tam, MSW ’21, a foundation year student in the program, who has been placed at OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services, presented her paper titled, “The 1995 Beijing Conference on Women: Progress and Challenges for Women”.

Sydney Boyer MSW ’20, an advanced student in the program, who is placed at the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office, presented her essay on “The Forgotten In Global Policy.”

The conference also featured presentations from Sandra Turner, Ph.D., director of the Women and Girls Institute at GSS, Marciana Popescu, Ph.D., professor in the Fordham Graduate School of Social Service, on the global compact for safe, regular, and orderly migration, Jourdan Williams, the director of global policy and advocacy for the International Health Awareness Network on the U.N.’s security resolution on women, peace, and security; and Dr. Sorosh Roshan, founding president of IHAN, who discussed what it was like to be at the Women’s Action conference in Beijing. 

The event examined the initiatives, treaties, and resolutions that came out of those U.N. events and detailed the issues that still exist and the work that still needs to be done.

A look at challenges for migrants, refugees

In light of the one-year anniversary of the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees, Eleanor Acer, LAW ’88, director of the Refugee Protection Program, Human Rights First, shared her experiences seeing “the impact of the failure to uphold human rights protections, particularly with respect to women and girls, as well as others, who are seeking U.S. refugee protection at our borders as we speak today.” 

Acer said that she and her colleagues “spent an awful lot of time over the past year visiting women, children, and other asylum seekers at our borders … as well as in immigration detention facilities around the country.”

“At the border, the Trump administration has worked to ban and block refugees from seeking protection at the U.S., turning them back to Mexico through a number of different policies, and now some of you may have heard of some reports of people being sent back to Guatemala or to Honduras and El Salvador,” she said.

Acer, who received the Louis J. Lefkowitz Award for Public Service from Fordham Law in 2007, said that this made those seeking refuge susceptible to attacks

“Many of the areas that the Trump administration is turning people back to are essentially ruled by cartels,” she said. “Refugees and migrants and women and children in particular are very vulnerable to being targeted. There have been reports of kidnappings, attacks, sexual assaults of asylum seekers and migrants all across the border.”

Acer said that her organization has been working since 1978 to “push the U.S. government to be a strong voice for human rights around the world and here at home to live up to our own human rights obligations.”

“Needless to say, these days our challenges are greater than ever,” she said. 

Human rights at the local level

Geeta Tewari, the associate director of the Urban Law Center at Fordham Law School, said that cities, particularly New York City, could lead the way in adopting some of the human rights goals that championed equality.

“New York is one of the most powerful cities in the world … I cannot emphasize enough how much of a moral obligation our city has, given that the city is a leader in finance, fashion, medicine, and art,” she said. “We can serve as a model to other cities, for how we treat people, how we value our citizens and their rights as human beings.”

Tewari said that because gender equality was specifically stated as one of the “17 Sustainable Development Goals” from the U.N. for this year, it was essential that cities like New York lead the way in that area.

Aid for children in war areas

Children who are living in war or disaster areas should also be a focus for the international community, according to Laura Perez, the Helen Hamlyn Senior Fellow at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.

About one in four children currently live in a country affected by conflict or disaster, said Perez. More than 50 million children migrated across borders or have been displaced by conflict from 2005 to 2015, Perez said, highlighting a 2016 report from UNICEF. This can have devastating long-term effects.

“Refugee children forced from their homes are five times more likely to be out of school than other children,” she said. 

Next steps for gender equality

In an effort to continue the work brought about by the featured U.N. conferences, Houry Geudelekian, who chairs the Non-Governmental Organization Committee on the Status of Women (NGO-CSW/NY), spoke of her organization’s efforts in working with the “Generation Equality Movement,” which aims to put together the “most comprehensive blueprint to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality.” 

The goal is to bring together stakeholders from across the world and gather their ideas on six major themes that impact equality for women: environmental protection, freedom from violence and stigma, poverty eradication, inclusive development, peaceful societies, and gender-responsive institutions. Through both online and in-person events in France and Mexico in 2020, the effort aims to “chart an agenda of concrete action to realize gender equality before 2030.”

Such is the crux of the urban experience, circa 2019, according to speakers at “The Global Metropolis: Power and Policy in the 21st Century,” a panel held at Fordham’s School of Law on Feb. 6.

The discussion, part of the Maloney Library’s Behind the Book series, featured the Urban Law Center’s faculty director, Nestor Davidson, and associate director, Geeta Tewari, co-editors of Global Perspectives in Urban Law: The Legal Power of Cities (Routledge, 2018), as well as Annika Hinze, Ph.D., director of the Urban Studies program and co-author of City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban America, 10th Edition (Routledge, 2018). David J. Goodwin, GSAS’ 12, the author of Left Bank of the Hudson: Jersey City and the Artists of 111 1st Street (Fordham University Press, 2017), creator of the three-year-old series, and assistant director of Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture, moderated the panel.

Small But Significant Victories

An issue that often brings this divide to light is immigration. One way that cities can assert their positions, said Davidson, is through the courts. Municipalities that had declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants have gained a small degree of power through recent legal victories, he said. The court battles came as the Trump administration has tried to punish cities for refusing to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by withholding unrelated funds.

“The targeting of the current administration so specifically against cities was such an indefensible overreach from a legal perspective. Whatever you think of the policy, half a dozen courts have looked at it and struck it down as unconstitutional,” said Davidson, who is also the Albert A. Walsh Chair in Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law at the Law School.

“So that has given cities a toehold, legally, for a certain level of more political power.”

He also noted that although it’s been nearly a generation since the mayor of a major city has ascended to a level of national elected office, they have influenced major policy areas nonetheless.

“Think about what Bloomberg did here in New York when it comes to public health. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) has adopted a lot of the measures that were pioneered here with obesity and sugary drinks. We were that classic laboratory of experimentalism,” he said.

Where Partisanship is Unwelcome

That experimentalism cuts across ideological lines. Tewari, who also publishes fiction, said that when she and Davidson edited Global Perspectives, they were careful to give the eleven papers included in the book an unbiased take.

“In my fiction, my characters are partisan, and have certain political and social views [they express], whereas in our work at the urban law center and in our volumes, we strive to take into account all sides of arguments. Our goal is to get to the heart of the issue in a focused way,” she said.

The notion that urban politics in the United States is constantly evolving as a dynamic interaction between governmental power, private actors, and a politics of identity, is a key aspect of City Politics, which was originally published in 1994. For Hinze, an associate professor of political science, editing the latest edition had extra resonance. The first author, Dennis R. Judd, Ph.D., professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was a mentor of hers in graduate school. In addition to revising data, she added sections related to the 2016 presidential election, race, and violence.

“It was certainly different because I knew there was another name on the cover that was carrying half the reputation of this book, so it was some extra pressure not to screw up. At first, it was intimidating, but then there was a lot of freedom to say ‘Well, this is something I really want to bring out,’” she said.

Tackling Big Problems Together

During the Q&A part of the discussion, one audience member wondered if, perhaps the federal government had an interest in preventing cities from defying it on big issues. Hinze said she thought it did, but noted it would be difficult to do so without undermining local democracy. And in any case, she said, cities are actually well suited to tackle big problems through groups like the Global Parliament of Mayors, a coalition of mayors from around the globe. Immigration becomes a more pressing concern for mayors, for instance, when members of immigrant communities fear they may be deported and are thus less likely to work with the police to solve crimes.

“Cities are not in a legal position to rival federal or national governments, but at the same time, they can have this really useful cross-fertilization process, where mayors get together and they talk. We’re seeing the bike share program right now that’s taking off in cities all over the world. That was a Dutch program that just took off just by being disseminated and shared by mayors.”

Davidson said a bigger cause for concern is that urban dwellers forget their suburban and rural brethren who are not benefitting from the renaissance that cities are experiencing today.

“We’re at a point in globalization where people who live in Singapore and Johannesburg and London have more in common with people who live in Manhattan than perhaps people who live in Manhattan have with people who live in upstate, rural New York,” he said.

These divides can be seen on a global scale as well. Both Brexit and the 2016 United States presidential election exposed stark ideological differences along geographical lines within one nation.

“There is a risk of exacerbating the traditional urban/rural conflict,” he said.

“When that goes global, there are some real challenges.”

Photo by Frances FynanBehind the Book, a series of discussions presented by Fordham Law School’s Maloney Library, brought together on October 23 two authors whose recent books tackle gentrification, the role of public art in cities, and who, ultimately, has a right to stake a claim in a booming metropolis like New York City.

The discussion, which was held at Fordham School of Law, featured David Goodwin, author of Left Bank of the Hudson: Jersey City and the Artists of 111 1st Street, (Fordham University Press, 2015), and Patrick Verel, author of Graffiti Murals: Exploring the Impacts of Street Art. (Schiffer Press, 2015) Geeta Tewari LAW ’05, associate director of the Urban Law Center, who served as moderator for the event.

Read the full story at Fordham Law News.