From DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.orgSat Sep 23 09:27:58 1995
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 08:48:00 +0100
From: Debra Guzman <DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.org>
Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
Subject: WCW: Beijing Declaration part 4

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## author     : dpcsd@tempo.undp.org
## date       : 21.09.95

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UNITED NATIONS

FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN

Beijing, China
4-15 September 1995

                        * ADVANCE UNEDITED DRAFT *

                Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
         adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for
                      Equality, Development and Peace

                        Beijing, 15 September 1995

     Strategic objective A.2.   Revise laws and
     administrative practices to ensure women's equal rights
     and access to economic resources

Actions to be taken

63.  By Governments:

     (a) Ensure access to free or low-cost legal services,
     including legal literacy, especially designed to reach
     women living in poverty;

     (b) Undertake legislative and administrative reforms to
     give women full and equal access to economic resources,
     including the right to inheritance and to ownership of
     land and other property, credit, natural resources and
     appropriate technologies;

     (c) Consider ratification of Convention No. 169 of the
     International Labour Organization (ILO) as part of
     their efforts to promote and protect the rights of
     indigenous people.

     Strategic objective A.3.   Provide women with access to
     savings and credit mechanisms and institutions

Actions to be taken

64.  By Governments:

     (a) Enhance the access of disadvantaged women,
     including women entrepreneurs, in rural, remote and
     urban areas to financial services through strengthening
     links between the formal banks and intermediary lending
     organizations, including legislative support, training
     for women and institutional strengthening for
     intermediary institutions with a view to mobilizing
     capital for those institutions and increasing the
     availability of credit;

     (b) Encourage links between financial institutions and
     non-governmental organizations and support innovative
     lending practices, including those that integrate
     credit with women's services and training and provide
     credit facilities to rural women.

65.  By commercial banks, specialized financial institutions
and the private sector in examining their policies:

     (a) Use credit and savings methodologies that are
     effective in reaching women in poverty and innovative
     in reducing transaction costs and redefining risk;

     (b) Open special windows for lending to women,
     including young women, who lack access to traditional
     sources of collateral;

     (c) Simplify banking practices, for example by reducing
     the minimum deposit and other requirements for opening
     bank accounts;

     (d) Ensure the participation and joint ownership, where
     possible, of women clients in the decision-making of
     institutions providing credit and financial services.

66.  By multilateral and bilateral development cooperation
organizations:

     Support, through the provision of capital and/or
     resources, financial institutions that serve
     low-income, small-scale and micro-scale women
     entrepreneurs and producers, in both the formal and
     informal sectors.

67.  By Governments and multilateral financial institutions,
as appropriate:

     Support institutions that meet performance standards in
     reaching large numbers of low-income women and men
     through capitalization, refinancing and institutional
     development support in forms that foster self-
     sufficiency.

68.  By international organizations:

     Increase funding for programmes and projects designed
     to promote sustainable and productive entrepreneurial
     activities for income- generation among disadvantaged
     women and women living in poverty.

     Strategic objective A.4.   Develop gender-based
     methodologies and conduct research to address the
     feminization of poverty

Actions to be taken

69.  By Governments, intergovernmental organizations,
academic and research institutions and the private sector:

     (a) Develop conceptual and practical methodologies for
     incorporating gender perspectives into all aspects of
     economic policy-making, including structural adjustment
     planning and programmes;

     (b) Apply these methodologies in conducting
     gender-impact analyses of all policies and programmes,
     including structural adjustment programmes, and
     disseminate the research findings.

70.  By national and international statistical
organizations:

     (a) Collect gender and age-disaggregated data on
     poverty and all aspects of economic activity and
     develop qualitative and quantitative statistical
     indicators to facilitate the assessment of economic
     performance from a gender perspective;

     (b) Devise suitable statistical means to recognize and
     make visible the full extent of the work of women and
     all their contributions to the national economy,
     including their contribution in the unremunerated and
     domestic sectors, and examine the relationship of
     women's unremunerated work to the incidence of and
     their vulnerability to poverty.