I’m attending my first CSW and it’s also my first time at the UN in New York. I arrived a few days after the start of the conference which was a relief since I heard that the first few days were really hectic with some people queuing for over seven hours just to get registered to be able to get into the UN.

I’m finding the forums a great place to stop and evaluate where we really are on achieving gender equality. Big international organizations and smaller grassroots ones come together so it’s a good time to think about all the different international treaties and policies and compare what these say to what is actually happening on the ground.

On Friday I spoke at an event hosted by Amnesty International which looked at how women who have experienced sexual violence can access justice and the services that they need. I talked about the situation in Uganda where I work, where levels of sexual violence are high and women who have been raped don’t have many options but to try to forget what has happened to them. The obstacles women face such as pressure from family members to settle out of court or lack of confidentiality at police stations might seem really trivial but they are actually huge hindrances for women in getting access to justice.

Other speakers on the panel spoke about the situations in Cambodia and Sweden, where Amnesty International has also recently done research. I was really struck by the similarities in the situations in the three different countries where prosecution rates for rape are also really low. I had no idea that they were so similar.

I heard how a woman in Cambodia might be forced to marry the man who raped her and have his children. I’ve had sleepless nights thinking about how you would live with that trauma. I was really shocked to hear that women living in Sweden have similar problems in accessing justice. I always used to think that I’d love to have been born and raised in Sweden and that they were 100 per cent on gender equality but this changed my mind and made me realise that the problem for women is not only about having money or not. Even women who are living in a place where there’s a good infrastructure in place don’t necessarily get justice and it’s still a problem of the balance of power between men and women in society and in their private lives and not just poverty as many people usually think.

I’m really looking forward to hearing what the outcome of the CSW will be. I’m hoping that we won’t just produce more words and documents, but that things will really change. It’s just not enough to write another beautiful document to hang on the wall, but we have to all be really committed to all these issues we’ve been discussing through taking quick action as individuals and organizations.