World meeting on women
More minuses than pluses since Beijing
By Joyce Chediac
United
Nations
It was the best-kept secret of the month.
Some 5,000 women from 1,200 organizations, along with
representatives from 188 governments, gathered in New York
June 5-9 to attend a landmark United Nations Special Session
of the General Assembly on the status of women. This
conference became a battlefield for women's rights.
When the governmental discussion bogged down, grassroots
observer women's organizations staged protests, issued
statements and held a news conference to pressure their
governments to get on with the task of moving women forward.
Yet hardly a word of this appeared in the corporate press
around the world.
While women battled with their governments, the New York
Times, the U.S. paper of record, was virtually silent. This
reporter, who attended two days of the events held at the UN
and around the city, found very few people here who even knew
the special session was taking place.
The Times was not alone in determining that this meeting
concerning half the world's population was not "newsworthy."
WomenAction 2000, a global network of women's information and
media organizations, found that "mainstream media coverage
[was] minimal."
The historic UN Special Session, called Beijing Plus Five,
was a follow-up to the 4th UN World Conference on Women held
in Beijing in 1995. This 1995 conference produced a Platform
for Action for establishing worldwide gender equality.
Governments met here this June to determine the current
status of women, evaluate how well that Platform for Action
had been implemented, and establish further plans for raising
the status of women.
More like 'Beijing Minus Five'
A few days into the meeting, many of the grassroots
women's organizations that had come as observers--called
Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGOs, by the UN--began to
dub the meeting "Beijing Minus Five." Women's groups were
distressed to find that the Beijing Platform for Action, the
blueprint for moving forward, was under attack.
They found themselves engaged in what many regarded as a
rearguard action--defending the wording of the original
document. What should have been an assessment of how
countries have progressed on gender advancement became a
rehashing of old conflicts over sexual and reproductive
rights. Leading the right-wing charge was the Vatican, which
opposed the terms "reproductive rights" and "sexual health."
There was also opposition to language on sexual
orientation.
Latin American representatives said the Vatican was
offering their governments promises of debt relief if they
opposed "reproductive rights."
While the U.S. government played a low-key role in public,
the June 8 edition of Earth Times reported that 24
conservative members of the U.S. Congress wrote to Permanent
Representative of the United States at the UN Mission Richard
Holbrooke, expressing their "great alarm" over Beijing Plus
Five negotiations.
Many NGOs made it known that they were not being heard by
their governments. Locked out of the commercial press, many
utilized a WomenAction 2000 media network to make their
positions known and communicate with their constituencies.
The network established two daily newspapers, television and
radio broadcasts, a Web site, and e-mail availability.
Across from the United Nations, a woman stood with her
mouth taped shut by a sticker that read: "Beijing Minus
Five."
Others appealed to women at large from whatever platforms
they could. For example, at a daylong "Focus on Women's
Health," Sonia Correra of the Brazilian Women's Health
Movement stopped her plenum talk to call the UN negotiations
"hell." Correra said "women [are] on the verge of nervous
breakdown" as a "never-ending debate over abortion is
blocking legislation." Correra then made an appeal for the UN
"to accept at least equal treatment under the law" for
lesbians.
At a June 8 press conference organized by the
International Women's Health Coalition, Gait Sen, from
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Earth, said an
"overwhelming majority" of the delegations and the NGOs were
"fed up" with the stalling tactics adopted by some
countries.
During the final session, women stood outside the UN
negotiating chambers wearing T-shirts that read, "No going
back."
In the wee hours of the last day, governments reached
consensus on an outcome with "no givebacks," according to
women advocates. There were slight gains, as "honor killings"
and "forced marriages" and "marital rape" were recognized by
member states as issues to be dealt with. These measures are
not binding, but are recommendations to member states.
While recognizing these gains, the Linkage Caucus of NGOs
said that "there was not enough political will on the part of
some governments and the UN system to agree on a stronger
document with more concrete benchmarks, numerical goals,
time-bound targets, indicators and resources aimed at
implementing the Beijing Platform."
There was no wording on sexual orientation.
According to Amnesty International, the question of
women's rights as human rights was watered down. And many
from the developing world felt that not enough attention was
given to issues such as globalization, poverty and debt.
Many NGOs raised these issues, which Vilma Espin Guillois,
head of the Cuban delegation and president of the Federation
of Cuban Women, spoke about. "Privatization, adjustment
policies, financial crisis and the IMF formulas have
increased the feminization of poverty and unemployment, the
deprivation of work, and the use of women as a cheap labor
force," she said.
Hypocritical U.S. role
So crucial are these issues that Hillary Rodham Clinton,
speaking on the first day, felt compelled to mention them.
"When it comes to women, globalization should not mean
marginalization," she said. Rodham Clinton did not mention
that U.S. banks are leading the International Monetary Fund
charge to impose austerity and cutbacks on women and men,
from Indonesia to Eastern Europe.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright cited the U.S.
Agency for International Development as "helping women," even
though it is widely felt that such U.S. agencies, with their
selective development and strings attached, are the
problem.
Albright did not mention how U.S. aggression in the former
Yugoslavia and Iraq has increased women's suffering
there. She did not say that for the past 20 years the
U.S. has refused to ratify the UN Convention on the
Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women,
signed by 165 countries.
Washington's real position on these issues was better
revealed by its backroom behavior. The U.S. delegate
expressed "reservations" on aspects of the final UN document
characterizing globalization and debt as "significant
obstacles to achieving gender parity." The U.S. government
was also not happy with the section calling "foreign
occupation" a human-rights violation.
On the domestic front, Secretary of Health, Education and
Welfare Donna Shalala spoke in glowing terms of "offices of
women's health in every government agency." She had little to
say about actual accomplishments.
She did not mention that, according to the New York-based
Human Rights Watch, the U.S. "shows alarming rates of
violence against women," fueled by "the indifference of state
officials and the failure to investigate and prosecute cases
of violence."
Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control reports that
at least 1.8 million U.S. women are assaulted every year by
their husbands and boyfriends. A 1999 government report
admitted to a serious problem of sexual abuse of women in
state and federal prisons.
Byllye Avery, founder of the National Black Women's Health
project, spoke at the same plenum. She gave a more accurate
description of women's health in the U.S.
Avery described a growing economic and health disparity
where "infant mortality for Black children is now twice that
of white children, and Black women are four times more likely
to die in childbirth than white women at every economic
level." She called on the audience to "get into the streets
and activate the people where you are to stop the erosion of
health care, starting with abortions for the poor."
African NGOs frustrated,
disappointed
Flame, a newspaper speaking for the African NGO caucus,
reported that no ground had been won in the draft outcome
document on the critical gender concerns vital to African
women, such as globalization, debt cancellation, poverty and
resources, and planning for better HIV/AIDS strategy. The
HIV/AIDS epidemic, said Flame, has eroded the fragile gains
made by African women.
"[We're] made to feel like intruders on the [UN] process,"
said Zambian NGO delegate Gladys Mutukwa.
South African representative Pregs Gov ender expressed
frustration that all the energy and focus at UN conferences
was directed on "the document," "brackets" and "language."
She emphasized, "The wo men's movement internationally must
reclaim itself."
The Linkage Caucus of NGOs expressed the view of many in
its final statement: "It is women's movements that have
placed women's empowerment and rights on the world's agenda
over the past 25 years. ... And it is women who will continue
to take the leadership in working for these goals. We will
not be turned back."
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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