From DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.orgThu Sep 7 10:20:50 1995 Date: Tue, 05 Sep 1995 14:42:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: Beijing program work to start Tuesday [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 : 05.09.95 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Beijing program work to start Tuesday By Daniel J. Shepard Earth Times News Service Work on the Platform for Action, the document that will be the centerpiece containing the aims, objectives and aspirations of the Fourth World Conference on Women, will begin today after delegates convene in the Main Committee. Conference organizers have called the document, which focuses on 12 areas of concern for women "action-oriented." The concerns range from poverty, health and education, political and economic participation, to violence against women, and the girl child. Much of the work on the 149-page, 362-paragraph document has already been agreed to by governments and the Committee will devote all of its time at the Conference toward resolving the remaining points of contention. At UN conferences, language that has not yet been agreed upon is placed in square brackets. According to Main Committee President Patricia Licuanan, 40 percent of the document was bracketed after the last preparatory meeting in March, but that number has been considerably reduced as a result of the informal consultations held in New York in August. It is estimated that just over 20 percent of the document is now in brackets. Agreement on each item in brackets must be arrived at by the consensus of all delegations. However, at the end, if a country finds itself in an extreme minority, it will take a reservation to all or part of the document rather than forcing a vote. The Committee is expected to ratify the decisions reached at the informal consultations, and also ratify the decision of a negotiating group on the use of the word gender. At the last PrepCom, delegates from Guatemala, Honduras, Benin and several other countries supported a proposal to bracket the term because they feared it was no longer being used in the manner that it was traditionally understood. The negotiating group decided that gender, as used in the document, was intended to be interpreted and used in its ordinary generally accepted usage, and that it had no new meaning or connotation. While the informal consultations were successful in removing a substantial number of brackets, particularly on human rights issues and on numerous economic matters, the toughest issues, such as the reproductive health issues were saved for Beijing. At the end of the informals, an agreement was nearly reached on the issue of "universal human rights," but Malta said it needed to consult with its capital. Some countries had pushed for the more restrictive term "universally recognized human rights." The Main Committee will then divide the work on the Platform between two working groups, one of which will likely be chaired by Irene Freudenshuss. The outcome of the negotiations will determine whether the Platform will be strong, that is one that directly acknowledges and addresses concerns of women, or one that passively suggests an ambiguous course of action. While all of the issues raised in the Platform are important to women, their treatment during the negotiations often has less to do with women than countries protecting their national prerogatives and sovereignty. The most obvious disputes over the Platform center around the issues of reproductive health, human rights, and resources. Some countries, primarily the Holy See, several Latin American countries have tried to attack certain provisions of the document that deal with reproductive rights. Often, when objecting to the language used at a previous conference, such as the International Conference on Population and Development, countries claim that they are not attacking the Cairo language, but rather the context in which it is being used at this conference. The Holy See, which has a woman leading its delegation, has signaled that it will not attack the Cairo document in Beijing, although it is expected that it will continue to guard against any language that could conceivably be construed as permitting or condoning abortion.