JOIN WIZO LIVE FROM THE UNITED NATIONS IN ABU DHABI

From the President’s Desk

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 30, I will lead World WIZO’s delegation to the 15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Abu Dhabi, where we will convene an official side event, and I invite you to join us live online from wherever you are in the world.

Our event, “Responding to Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in the Digital Age,” will bring together international legal, professional and technological expertise around an issue that has been at the heart of our international work since October 7.

Our objective is clear: to ensure that the crimes committed against Israeli women on October 7, and the broader issue of conflict-related sexual violence, cannot be ignored, minimized or pushed to the margins of the international agenda.

WIZO has held consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC, since 1959. But status has meaning only when it is translated into action.

In Abu Dhabi, we are doing exactly that.

Initiated by Dr. Hava Bugajer, WIZO’s Representative to the United Nations in Vienna, the event brings together the expertise of The Dinah Project, the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (IJL), JurFem and Generative AI for Good.

The purpose is not another one-hour statement. It is to place Israeli experience within a wider international legal conversation and to move from testimony to evidence, accountability and justice.

Beyond the United Nations

The UN event stands at the centre of a three-day WIZO working mission to the UAE, bringing together WIZO women from our federations around the world.

It is not simply another WIZO delegation, but a way of using the extraordinary reach of our global movement to create relationships, open doors, and make sure women’s voices are present where they matter.

Our work will extend beyond the United Nations into the evolving relationship between Israel and the Gulf and into Jewish life in the Emirates.

The Abraham Accords opened a new regional reality. Governments opened the door. The next challenge is to give those agreements depth through relationships between people, communities and civil society.

And we are not entering this space alone.

Our partners in this mission include the Embassy of Israel in the United Arab Emirates, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Abu Dhabi, and the World Jewish Congress (WJC).

The Power of Our Global Movement

The strength of this mission lies not only in what happens in Abu Dhabi, but in what our federation leaders can carry forward when they return home.

Each comes with her own relationships, within Jewish communities, civil society, professional networks, public institutions and the wider society in which she lives.

A conversation that begins in Abu Dhabi can therefore continue in many countries, through many different networks and long after the mission itself has ended.

This is where the reach of WIZO becomes influence: an international platform creates relationships, and our federations carry those relationships forward in their own countries and communities.

I invite you to stand with us as we put that international reach into action at the United Nations in Abu Dhabi.

Anat Vidor

President of World WIZO