From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgWed Sep 27 09:29:41 1995
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 14:47:00 +0100
From: Debra Guzman <DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.org>
Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
Subject: WCW: How Beijing Platform came about

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## author     : theearthtime@igc.apc.org
## date       : 24.09.95

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How Beijing Platform came about
By Daniel J. Shepard
Earth Times News Service

Called progress by leaders of women's organizations and a
step backwards by some religious authorities, the Platform
for Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women
is not likely to win awards for inspirational literature,
brevity or clarity.

Rather, the Platform, which has been called by Conference
officials "a blueprint for action" to advance women's status
into the 21st century is a rambling and often repetitive
document where virtually every word has been debated by the
189 delegations that attended the Beijing meeting, and which
was not fully agreed to until 4:44 in the morning of the
last day of the Conference. But buried within the text,
there are advances.

The principal goals of women's conferences, largely to
promote equality and empowerment for women, have not changed
much since the first conference was held in Mexico City in
1975, and did not change at the most recent Conference in
Beijing earlier this month.

But there were advances in Beijing, and although many of the
gains were of a mostly technical nature, some important
women's rights were reaffirmed and some new ones were
articulated. More important, the entire negotiating process
leading up to the Conference established exactly where the
roadblocks to women's advancement lie.

It was over three years ago that the General Assembly
decided to hold a women's conference in 1995 "at the lowest
possible cost," and it was not that much longer after that
China was awarded the right to host the Conference. Five
regional preparatory meetings were held between June and
November last year, in Jakarta for Asia and the Pacific; Mar
del Plata, Argentina, for Latin America and the Caribbean;
Vienna for Europe and North America; Amman, Jordan for the
Arab region; and Dakar, Senegal for Africa.

Each regional meeting produced its own platform for action,
and countries have been encouraged to follow these
documents, in addition to the global Platform that was
finalized in Beijing.

Negotiations on the Beijing document began in earnest at the
preparatory meeting held in New York in March. The
Secretariat offered a draft Platform that was roundly
criticized by many delegations as being unfocused,
unbalanced, or that it portrayed women only as victims.

Delegations loaded the document up with amendments, and to
deal with the unanticipated burden, the negotiations broke
off into small negotiating groups that were off-limits to
representatives of nongovernmental groups and the press.

Major disputes over human rights, sexual and reproductive
rights, resources, and the use of the world "equity"
surfaced early at the PrepCom.

One of the dominant discussions in New York concerned an
attack by Honduras and Guatemala on the use of the word
"gender" which they claimed was no longer being used to
connote the ideas of the two sexes.

They insisted that the term be bracketed, and a special
group was convened to discuss the matter. The group later
agreed that the term gender meant nothing more than its
usual and common definition.

Many NGOs believed, on the basis of the PrepCom, that there
was a very real chance that the progress made at the
International Conference on Population and Development would
be rolled back. Many predicted that the Beijing conference
would be marked by the same confrontations with the Holy See
that occurred at the ICPD.

Because of the slow progress, the New York PrepCom was
extended three days, but when it was over, between 30-40
percent of the Platform was in brackets.

Nevertheless, at a press conference at the end of the
PrepCom, the leaders of the Conference, Secretary General
Gertrude Mongella, Commission on the Status of Women
Chairperson Patricia Licuanan, and working group chairperson
Irene Freudenschuss-Reichl attempted to put a positive spin
on the events, explaining that it was not at all unusual for
a document to be heavily bracketed, and that the main areas
of contention were the areas that are always in contention
at conferences, namely rights, resources, and reproductive
rights.

But when the full realization of the amount of work that
remained ahead sank in, the Secretariat requested the
Economic and Social Council to allow it to hold an
additional week of "informal consultations" to whittle down
the number of remaining brackets.

The informals were held in New York during the first week of
August, and progress was made on many of the easier issues,
with the major areas of controversy, such as health, being
left entirely for Beijing.

Of the 362 paragraphs in the draft Platform that came to
Beijing, there were still 438 sets of brackets around
disputed text in about 171 paragraphs. The most heavily
bracketed chapter was the health section, followed by the
sections on the girl child and armed conflict. The
negotiations did not necessarily follow expectations, as the
health section was supposed to be the most difficult chapter
of the Platform, and yet it was one of the first to be
agreed upon, at least temporarily. The Holy See, following
through on its pre-Conference promise not to block
consensus, instead voiced its objections on issues of
reproductive rights, sexuality, and family planning, and
worked on lobbying other states to take the lead in opposing
those provisions.

However, the early gains made in the health section, such as
a definition of sexual rights for women, language on
parental responsibility that stressed the rights of the
child, and another provision that called for a review of
laws that punish women for having undergone an illegal
abortion, were later held hostage to other negotiating
demands.

Those other demands included the desire of the Group of 77,
which speaks for over 130 developing countries, to have the
"new and additional resources" included in sections that
dealt with financing. In the end, the numerous financing
provisions did include such language, although it stressed
that while new resources were needed, existing resources
within countries needed to be mobilized and put to better
use.

Other issues that dominated the Conference caused discomfit
for a number of countries.

African delegates were determined to win approval of a
provision that gives women and girls equal rights to
inheritance, but representatives from Islamic countries
maintained that their Sharia'a laws mandated a distribution
of assets that gives women half the amount that her brother
inherits. They called for equity instead of equality. But
because of the determination of the Africans to assert
women's rights, a compromise was reached that women had an
equal right to inherit which purposely avoided the question
of the proportion that they should inherit. All claimed
victory.

The African women said that they now had established the
equal right to inheritance which had often been denied, and
delegates from Islamic countries said the result ensured
"justice."

The word equity does not appear in the Platform, which many
women's rights advocates hailed as a victory.

And it was several unlikely European Union countries,
Denmark and Sweden, that held up agreement on a provision
that calls for the measurement and valuation of women's
unpaid work. Ultimately, they were prevailed upon to agree
on language that is a major improvement over the language on
the topic used at the Social Summit in Copenhagen

The EU along with many JUSCANZ (Japan, US, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand) countries tried push the issue of
prohibiting discrimination against women on the basis of
sexual orientation and tried to incorporate the definition
of sexual rights into both the declaration and the human
rights sections. But their efforts met with stiff opposition
from more traditional countries, and at tense negotiations
shortly before midnight on the last night of the Conference,
delegates emerged reporting agreement that would leave the
Beijing Declaration without mention of the sexual rights,
and that the human rights section would refer to the sexual
rights paragraphs only by number. In addition, agreement was
reached on a provision that allows countries to implement
the entire Platform in accordance with fundamental human
rights and cultural and religious traditions. Sexual
orientation essentially remained the only open issue.

The Iranian delegate declared, "We're finished," after the
meeting but EU delegates appeared more subdued. Obviously
unhappy with the outcome of the Declaration, they contended
that the reference of sexual rights in the human rights
section was very important.

As the Main Committee met into the night debating the issue
of sexual orientation, it became apparent that the phrase
did not have substantial support of most governments, and
Licuanan ruled the issue dead.