U.S. WOMEN AND CUBA COLLABORATION

In March 2025, CSW69 celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform, and organizers invited proposals for NGO Parallel Events panels that would report on progress and challenges in the 12 action areas named in the original Beijing Platform. They welcomed proposals as well about a couple of other content areas, including gender and sexuality justice for women and girls. I submitted and had accepted a panel proposal for a Parallel Event virtual webinar: “Cuba’s Families Code: Redefining the Global Fight for LGBTQIA2S+ Rights.”

 

Thanks to the assistance of the WILPF-US Cuba and the Bolivarian Issues Committee, who provided my travel funds, I was able to attend and participate in CSW69, to meet with Cuban and LBTQI+ colleagues in various events, including the CSW Rainbow Caucus, and to widely advertise the webinar that was planned for the second week of the CSW69 Conference. This report gives an overview of my time at CSW69.

 

Much preparation, as well as help and support by others, led to the success of our webinar. Early on, I spoke with Jan Coramine of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF-US) at length about the work of the US Women and Cuba Collaboration and its Lesbians and Allies Project that I led. (Note: presently, because of Collaboration priorities to address the challenges of the current political climate in a consolidated manner, LBTQI+ work is now housed under the Collaboration’s Campaign for Solidarity with the Reality of Cuban Women’s Lives.) Some webinar attendees and participants were from WILPF-US, and Leni Villagomez Reeves, co-chair of a WILPF-US Issues Committee (Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance), was a lead participant in our webinar. I hope to continue promoting the WILPF-US alliances and draw more LBTQI+ women into WILPF-US and Collaboration work. Other preparation involved talking with Cuban colleagues who would be attending CSW as national delegates and with other colleagues from Bolivia and the US who would be participating in our webinar.

 

While in New York at the conference, I attended events and was able to motivate interest in our upcoming webinar by sharing information about how Cuba has long been a leader in gender equity, reproductive rights, parental leave, and was the first country to sign the 1979 CEDAW, which the US has yet to do. The new Families Code in Cuba’s Constitution, approved in 2022, protects all Cuban individuals and families to live freely in their family choices, and their sexuality and gender identities. One outcome related to the conference was being in conversation about Kim Anno and Hyung Lee’s film project, ¡Quba!, a historical overview of work leading up to Cuba’s adoption of their new Families Code. I’m working with others in the Collaboration to bring the film to Seattle audiences in January 2026.

 

CSW NGO Rainbow Caucus, 50 people attended:

I co-facilitated the NGO CSW Rainbow Caucus (attended by 50 people) with Mads Menoher, Advocacy & Administrative Intern for NGO CSW, distributed flyers (see attached) and talked about our Parallel Event webinar, collected emails of interested people, and did a debrief of the Caucus in the NGO office, where I met with Ivy Koek and Pamela Morgan, this year’s Co-Chairs of NGO CSW/NY. 

 

I joined a meeting with the Rainbow Caucus planning committee, including Rosa Lizarde, a co-chair for NGO CSW70 next year. For next year and beyond, we are planning to have the  Caucus be more than a meet and greet. I am planning to speak more formally in the future about the US Women and Cuba Collaboration and its work and support of Cuban and US LBTQI+ communities, and hope to interest and involve Rainbow Caucus participants in future work with the Collaboration.

 

NGO CSW Parallel Event Webinar, 33 people registered 

Event Description: The Lesbians and Allies Project of the US Women and Cuba Collaboration hosts an International Queer Women and Gender Expansive presentation with activists addressing threats, challenges, and gains in their communities. We use Cuba’s liberatory national Families Code (2022) as an aspirational model for the international human rights of LGBTQI2S+ peoples everywhere. Cuba’s Family Code, in effect, makes love the law. It constitutionally legalizes same-sex marriages, guarantees same-sex adoptions, and recognizes solidarity gestation, prenuptial agreements, assisted reproduction, and a partner’s hospital access for all couples. 

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​“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.”

-Arundhati Roy

 

This panel was designed to highlight Cuba as a model and source of education for developing laws and strategies to support the mainstreaming and inclusion of all gender identities, and I’m grateful to all who helped on this, in particular, speakers and co-sponsors.

 

Please return to our main report to see additional information, including the CSW event speakers and sponsors' information, and attachments about the Families Code.

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