EIN at CSW69: Advocating for Queer Youth Representation
EIN at CSW69: standing in the rooms where decisions about our lives are made
New York | March 2025
For two weeks in March, the United Nations Headquarters in New York became the center of the global fight for gender equality. Governments negotiated. Movements organized. And among the hundreds of civil society organizations in the building, Equilibrium Initiative Nigeria (EIN) carried a message that too often goes unheard in these spaces:
Queer young people from the Niger Delta deserve a seat at the tables where their futures are decided, it was not just as a symbol, but as a strategy.
From March 10 to 21, EIN joined the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69), the largest annual global gathering on gender equality. This year carried extra weight. CSW69 marked Beijing+30: the 30-year review of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most ambitious blueprint for women’s rights the world has ever produced.
Thirty years on, the question on the table was simple and urgent: How far have we actually come, and what’s being rolled back?
Why This Moment Mattered
Beijing+30 was never going to be a celebration. It was an audit.
Delegates gathered to measure progress since 1995, confront the rollbacks gaining ground worldwide, and chart a bolder path for the decade ahead. And they did so at a time when civic space for LGBTQI+ organizations is shrinking funding is tightening, hostility is rising, and grassroots groups are increasingly squeezed out of the very conversations that shape their work.
That is exactly why EIN’s presence was not optional. When a community-based organization working directly in LGBTQI spaces in a country like Nigeria walks into that room, it provides a much-needed perspective and representation.
Where EIN Showed Up
At the funding conversation that movements can’t afford to miss. EIN’s Executive Director, Ameachi Gift, joined the side event “Stepping Up, Standing By, and Speaking Out for Women’s Rights Movements,” co-hosted by Mama Cash, the Equality Fund, and the governments of Canada, France, and Mexico. The session zeroed in on a truth every frontline organization knows: feminist and gender-diverse movements across the Global South cannot survive just on goodwill. They need sustained, flexible funding and deeper solidarity to match.
In the LBQT Caucus, bringing the view from the frontlines. EIN also engaged in the LBQT Caucus convened by Outright International, joining strategic dialogues with state allies, including the Norwegian government. Here, EIN did what it does best: it brought the ground-level reality. What it actually means to run an LGBTQI+ organization in a criminalized, high-surveillance environment. What grassroots advocates face when the law itself is the threat.
The Bigger Picture
Over two weeks, thousands of delegates negotiated commitments meant to shape gender-responsive policy for the next ten years. Most of those rooms rarely hear from organizations like EIN, community-rooted, youth-led, operating in one of the most complex human rights contexts in the world.
This time, that voice was in the room.
What We Carried Home
We left New York with new connections, renewed solidarity, and a sharper mandate: to keep closing the distance between international declarations and lived realities from the conference halls of the United Nations to the streets and homes of the Niger Delta.
International frameworks only matter if they reach the people they were written for. EIN exists to make sure they do.
The work continues, and you can be part of it.
Follow EIN’s advocacy, research, and frontline response: 🌐 ein4queeryouths.org
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Equilibrium Initiative Nigeria: advancing justice, safety, and dignity for queer youth in Nigeria.