From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgWed Sep 27 09:29:41 1995 Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 14:47:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: How Beijing Platform came about [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## author : theearthtime@igc.apc.org ## date : 24.09.95 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.