Commission on the Status of Women 2005: Beijing+10 implications for the UN human rights system

Report by Maeve Taylor for Banúlacht [1]

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

The Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) was the outcome of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, in September 1995. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) were adopted unanimously by 189 world governments. The Beijing Declaration promised to remove all obstacles to equality for women and to ensure a gender perspective in all government policies and programmes. The Beijing Platform for Action is one of the most comprehensive articulations of Governments' commitments to the human rights of women and girls. It is based on the principles, and develops the strategies of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It contains an analysis of the underlying causes of poverty and discrimination, and its strategies and actions outline what human rights commitments to women would actually mean. At the core of the Beijing Platform for Action is the idea of accountability-that governments have a duty to implement these commitments.

The Beijing Platform for Action was drafted and adopted by governments, and thousands of women activists worldwide have contributed during all the phases of developing, drafting and then monitoring and implementing the Platform for Action. The Beijing Platform for Action is not about abstractions—it addresses issues that affect the lives of women and girls worldwide everyday. But the recommendations in the Platform are only meaningful if governments demonstrate the political will to translate them into action. In practice, this means that women and women’s organisations must know and understand them and use them to further policy and action at all levels.[2]

Banúlacht and the Beijing Process
Since the 1990s, women’s organisations in Ireland and worldwide have used the review processes of the Beijing Platform for Action to demand that governments fulfil the commitments that they have made in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and in many subsequent human rights treaties and world conferences. These review processes include the annual meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW),[3] and the Beijing+5 Review held in 2000.

As a development education NGO with a focus on development issues from a feminist perspective, Banúlacht works to promote dialogue and debate on gender and development. A central focus of our work over the last ten years has been the implementation of women’s human rights in the context of development cooperation. Banúlacht took an active role with regard to the Fourth World Conference on Women held at Beijing in 1995. Representatives of Banúlacht participated as advisers on the Irish government delegation to the preparatory meeting for the European region in 1994 and as members of the government delegation to the World Conference. Banúlacht also coordinated the participation of Irish women’s organisations at the NGO Forum held in parallel with the Conference. Between 1998 and 2000, we carried out awareness raising about the content and significance of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing Platform for Action).

For the Beijing+5 Review in 2000, we prepared a submission on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, entitled ‘Putting the Action into Beijing’. The submission was based on Banúlacht’s research and on our consultations with women’s organisations, and addressed implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the contexts of both domestic policy and development cooperation. As co-founder and member of the Pro-Beijing Women’s NGO Coalition, we participated in the drafting of a Beijing+5 Shadow Report, the production of a poster entitled ‘Promises Made Promises Broken’ and a series of regional consultations with locally based women’s groups.

Banúlacht representatives attended the Beijing+5 Review in an NGO observer capacity, and the 2004 UNECE PrepCom for Beijing+10 and the Beijing+10 Review/CSW 2005 as members of the Irish delegation.

In preparation for Beijing+10, Banúlacht liased closely with the Women’s Human Rights Alliance and Network Women in Development Europe (WIDE), and participated in a Global Strategy Meeting (New York December 2004) and a WIDE Strategy Meeting (Rome, February 2005). We produced a series of briefings for NGOs, development agencies and women’s networks and circulated information and analysis received through international women’s organisations. For Beijing+10, a key focus of our work was lobbying of the Department of Foreign Affairs (Human Rights Unit and Development Cooperation Ireland) in order first to secure places on the delegation, and subsequently in relation to advocacy points relevant to the political processes at the CSW.

Reviewing progress towards implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action

In 2000, the five-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action was held at the 23rd UN General Assembly Special Session. By 2000, there was already considerable backlash among neo-conservative groups and governments against the gains of the 1990s conferences. Right wing, anti-feminist groups were present in great numbers, as they had been at the CSW meeting earlier that year. The process of the Beijing+5 Review was a two-week negotiation to produce an ‘Outcomes Document’ reflecting on progress in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action and renewing commitment to accelerated implementation of the Beijing commitments. The negotiation of the Outcomes Document was slow and arduous, and governments were resistant to introducing stronger language on areas such as reproductive rights and sexual rights. However, the document does contain important new language, particularly on the negative impacts of globalisation, and on trade policy.[4]

While the Beijing Conference had been notable for its action-focused and forward looking approach to women’s human rights, at the Beijing+5 Review, only five years later, the rallying call was ‘No going back on Beijing’, and the focus was to protect the gains of earlier conferences, rather than further push out the boundaries of human rights discourse and analysis.
In the five years since Beijing+5 much debate has taken place within feminist organisations and networks on the desirability or otherwise of a Fifth World Conference on Women.[5] The decision was made in 2004 that the Beijing+10 Review would be held at the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW),[6] rather than at a separate, higher level event. While the question of whether another World Conference should be held in the future is still open, many believe that now is not the right time. The election of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States in 2004 ushered in of an era of heightened neo-conservative backlash. WIDE’s statement to the CSW, for example, identifies an increase in conservative forces in Europe, the United States and other areas of the world, the rise of religious fundamentalisms and a diversion of resources away from the fight against poverty to the ‘war on terror’, combined with a backlash against women’s rights and a weakening of many of the gains won in the 1990s UN conferences.[7] Many now felt that negotiations on substantive issues in such a climate would be more likely to jeopardise gains made at previous UN Conferences than to contribute to the evolution of human rights thinking. For many NGOs, the main lobbying point prior to the CSW was ‘no new negotiations’[8].

The Beijing+10 Review is in part the story of attempts by the United States to roll back gains on women’s human rights, in particular reproductive rights, and its almost complete isolation by the member states of the UN in this attempt. It is also a story of frustration and anger on the part of NGOs at yet again having to defend the gains of ten years ago, rather than looking to the future. The lack of the kind of negotiation of a lengthy strategy document that characterised both Beijing and Beijing+5, though strategically prudent, was also problematic. Issues that were not adequately addressed in the Beijing Platform for Action (e.g. globalisation, sexual rights, reproductive rights, definition of family) were not be on the governments’ agenda for discussion, and so progressive organisations were not be able to use the CSW to move forward UN thinking on these issues. The absence of debate on these issues, and the necessity of maintaining ‘holding positions’, rather than negotiating for substantive gains took its toll on NGOs and governments and contributed to a sense of disaffection and disillusionment with UN processes throughout the CSW meeting.

The Political Declaration of the CSW 49th session

The agenda for the CSW was publicised many months before the meeting, and focused on exchange of good practice and review of barriers to implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. However, as regional preparatory meetings[9] were held, it became clear that there would also be a Political Declaration from the CSW as the mechanism by which the CSW would express political will for the reaffirmation and implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. The wording of this Declaration represented a diplomatic challenge of great delicacy. It would have to reaffirm governments’ commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in terms that were at once unequivocal enough to leave no doubt as to the validity of the documents, and uncontroversial enough to allow of agreement by consensus without further negotiation.

It was not until late February that the Bureau[10] of the CSW first circulated a Draft Political Declaration to UN member states. The one-page Draft Political Declaration called for the reaffirmation of the “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly”. It emphasized the essential importance of the “full and effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action to achieve internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration” and to integrate “a gender perspective in the preparations for and the outcome of the High-level Plenary meeting on the review of the Millennium Declaration.” Furthermore it recognized the mutual reinforcement of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It welcomed the progress in achieving gender equality, and expressed commitment to “full and accelerated implementation.” Finally the Draft Declaration called on the United Nations and the international community to “intensify their contributions to the implementation” of the Beijing documents.

Note on process: (1) Informal consultations at the UN are closed meetings whose discussions, unlike those at the Plenary sessions do not form part of the official record of the meeting. These informals are used to hammer out agreement on documents, such as declarations or resolutions, before they are formally proposed in Plenary session. The sponsoring country (or usually countries) of a resolution, for example, will hold informal consultations with the other member states to hear proposed amendments which may or may not be accepted and included in the final draft submitted to the Plenary. The aim of the sponsoring county is to gain support for the resolution to be agreed by consensus: if it is clear that support will not be forthcoming, the sponsor can withdraw the resolution, or put it to a vote. At the discretion of the Chair, NGOs may be permitted to attend the informals. (2) At intergovernmental meetings such as this, the EU operates as one bloc; the country that holds the EU Presidency in a particular year speaks on behalf of the EU at the meeting. Daily EU coordination meetings are held to develop common positions on issues.

Discussion of the Declaration began in the week prior to the CSW, during two days of ‘informal consultations’. The United States introduced two amendments to the Draft Declaration. Quite apart from the content of the amendments, their introduction could have opened the door to a lengthy negotiation of the entire document, thereby stalling the CSW process. The proposed amendment that caused most dissent would have inserted a phrase into the first paragraph stating that the Beijing Platform for Action and the Outcomes Document of the Beijing+5 Review “do not create any new international human rights, and that they do not include the right to abortion”.[11] The United States justified their amendment by references to comments made in their 2004 concluding comments by the UN Human Rights Committee[12] stating its deep concern about Poland’s abortion laws and recommended that Poland should legislation and practice on abortion.[13] According to the United States, these comments effectively reinterpreted prior agreements on abortion. The United States, therefore was not only challenging the CSW, but sending a message to the Human Rights Committee that its relatively recent shift to addressing systemic violations of women’s rights, such as restrictions of reproductive rights, is not acceptable to the biggest non-paying member of the UN.

After a week of negotiations, the United States finally agreed to join the consensus, but made the following explanation of position:
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action express important political goals that the United States endorses. We reaffirm the goals, objectives, and commitments of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action based on several understandings. We understand these documents constitute an important policy framework that does not create international legal rights or legally binding obligations on states under international law. Madam Chair, we have heard no delegation disagree with our interpretation. In addition, we appreciate your own assertion that the Beijing documents “should not be seen as creating any new human rights.” This week we heard an international consensus on this point, which is useful to clarifying the intent and purpose of Beijing. Based on consultations this week with states, we further understand that states do not understand the Beijing or Beijing+5 outcome documents to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion. Our reaffirmation of the goals, objectives, and commitments of these documents does not constitute a change in the position of the United States with respect to treaties[14] we have not ratified.

Many countries, among them the European Union very strongly welcomed the adoption of the Declaration as a clear expression of international commitment to gender equality and gender justice, the United States however insisted on the inclusion of their “explanations of vote” into the official report, where they repeated all their arguments. This strategy was followed by Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua.

The Beijing+10 Review and the Millennium Development Goals

A concern of many NGOs, including WIDE, as they entered the CSW process was that the human rights agenda of the UN was being sidelined by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and that the strong linkage to the international system of human rights accountability in the Millennium Declaration was greatly weakened in the MDGs. WIDE’s statement to the CSW makes this point very strongly:

“Unlike the BPfA which takes into account deep inequalities within and across countries, the MDGs ignore the structural nature of poverty as well as the structural nature of gender inequality. There is a central contradiction within the MDG process that asks governments to invest in ‘pro-poor policies’ while at the same time employing neo-liberal economic policies that only serve to increase the impoverishment of marginalized women and men. WIDE therefore calls for a far more democratic and gender aware MDG process, one that is accountable to the global women’s movement, and which makes gender equality, women’s human rights and women’s empowerment central to the achievement of the MDGs. It is critical that Governments ensure that the MDGs draw on the Beijing PfA as integral to all MDG goals.”

The Political Declaration of the CSW and the High Level Panel on the MDGs recognized that the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and CEDAW are essential to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the time bound targets for eradicating poverty and implementing the Millennium Declaration. In his statement to the CSW, Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, highlighted the seven strategic priorities proposed in the MDG Task Force on Gender Equality, and reaffirmed the critical importance of taking focused action on these issues. The seven priority areas are: (i)expanding efforts to combat violence against girls and women; (ii) guaranteeing sexual and reproductive health and rights; (iii) guaranteeing women's and girls' property, land and inheritance rights; (iv) eliminating gender inequality in employment, such as eliminating the earnings gap; (v) increasing the number of women in national and local governments; (vi) investing in the infrastructure necessary to reduce women's and girls' time burdens, so that, for example, the amount of time women spend on gathering fuel, water, and other basic necessities is drastically reduced; (vii) expanding girls' access to education, secondary as well as primary. [15]

United States Draft Resolution on Women and the Economy

Note on process: The negotiation is conducted by the government delegations. With 10 resolutions proposed, most member states had to spread their delegations very thinly, and focus on a small number of resolutions. Few countries had the resources to have delegates with sufficient expertise to follow the negotiations on more than a small number of resolutions. NGOs can attend in the observers’ gallery, but are not entitled to receive documentation or to be consulted. NGOs therefore depend on friendly governments and on colleagues in the government delegations to provide them with access to the documents being discussed. Some governments automatically share documents with NGOs, some refuse to. When there were a large number of NGOs working tracking the negotiation it was possible to get access to documents, translate them, and comment on them. Some NGOs kept track of the positions adopted by different governments, others noted and summarised all the agreed changes. Coordination meetings of NGOs provided opportunities to analyse and comment on the proceedings. This work then formed the basis of other NGOs’ lobbying of their governments. NGOs on delegations could organise meetings with officials, or hand them lobby material in the negotiating rooms. In some cases, even the delegates have trouble getting access to documents. The US facilitators of the Economic Advancement of Women resolution for example e-mailed the latest copies of the to the governments’ missions at the UN text only hours before the informals, leaving little or no time for preparation or coordination. The negotiation at the ‘informals’ requires a high degree of technical knowledge on the part of delegates and NGOs, and thorough familiarity with the agreed language of the Beijing Platform for Action and Cairo. General Assembly resolutions essentially recycle the language of past declarations and agreements: the choice of words is never random or unthinking. The omission of some phrases is as significant as the inclusion of others, as each represents a kind of coded message about the values and principles governments prioritise and the solutions they favour to the problem being addressed. Everything from the use of singular or plural and the placing of a comma is potentially contentious and open to debate. The informal consultations are lengthy and complex. As more and more amendments are proposed, the Chair from time to time will offer to ‘clean up’ the text and produce ‘facilitators’ texts’. In the case of the draft resolutions, these texts incorporate the changes proposed by other states that the proposing government accepts, but omit many others and may include new paragraphs which are then subject to further discussion.

The CSW also had to consider proposals for General Assembly resolutions; ten such proposals were tabled.[16] Informal consultations on the draft resolutions began in the second week. Banúlacht followed the process of the resolution proposed by the United States on ‘Economic Advancement of Women’. In an explanatory note, the United States explained that it intended to “discuss the need for women’s greater access to free market factors, in order to create more women entrepreneurs and thereby accelerate economic development.“ In accordance with the World-Bank-supported efficiency approach the authors of the resolution maintained an approach throughout based on investing in women’s prosperity so that, “the entire society benefits as well as those women’s families. Empowering women creates a rising tide that lifts all ships”.
The draft focused primarily on women’s micro- and meso-entrepreneurship and enumerated such measures as promoting equality of education, provision of training in business skills to women, the collection of disaggregated data, increasing women’s access to saving and lending, to opening their equal access to information and communication technology. The framework for these measures would be a “strong enabling environment for women entrepreneurs” which includes “a sound macro-economic framework, accountable systems for managing public resources, (..) an attractive investment climate, competitive markets (.--.) and reduced barriers to international trade”. NGOs, among them Banúlacht, WIDE, IGTN, WICEJ, WEDO and ICFTU, in their proposals for amending the text, highlighted the rights-based approach of the Platform for Action and of CEDAW. They emphasized the role of the state in ensuring sustainable livelihoods and employment in formal and informal economies. They affirmed that the empowerment of women must go far beyond micro-credit, micro-enterprises and individual responses and must deal with systemic causes of poverty. They called for a strengthening of national and international investment regulation to be included in the operational paragraphs. They highlighted the crucial role of the public sector in providing adequately funded and affordable essential services, including primary health care, sexual and reproductive health and rights, housing, education, water and sanitation, energy and transport. However, it was notable how few NGOs, especially in the second week, were following the process of negotiation on the economic resolution.

The resolution in its original form focused on providing enhancing environments for business women as well as furthering the agenda for trade liberalisation. The draft text was met from the beginning with criticism from many sides, governments as well as NGOs. Revisions proposed by governments added new language balancing the resolution with clauses on poverty alleviation, references to collective bargaining and to the principles contained in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and the Rights at Work. The informal consultations were lengthy and complex, with the United States, as sponsor of the resolution, producing a number of ‘facilitators’ texts’. The delay in producing facilitator’s texts, which meant that delegates generally did not have them until just before the consultations (and blocs such as the EU did not necessarily have the up-to-date text for their daily coordination meetings) added to the air of frustration.
Three final amendments to the Resolution on the Economic Advancement of Women on (1) sexual and reproductive health rights, (2) the role of the public sector and (3) recognition of the negative impacts of globalization were carried to a vote in the final plenary in the General Assembly, because of the opposition of the United States. Initially, the United States stated that "because reproductive rights does not include abortion”, they could "reluctantly accept" the language. However, a phone call from Washington meant that immediately, while they still had the mike, the United States contradicted this, and said, "no, we won't accept". The United States’ representative then said she wished to withdraw the changed text from consideration. But, as the Cuban representative reminded the Chair, UN rules state that once a resolution is amended the co-sponsor cannot withdraw support. The United States was effectively outmanoeuvred, and left with no choice but to vote (with Nicaragua) against its own resolution.[17]

The role of the United States at the Beijing+10 CSW

In the wider context of the international system of accountability for human rights, the United States position at the 49th CSW reflects an ideological position in relation to human rights in general, and not only reproductive rights, which is of great concern. Human rights concepts are not static: the UN system since the 1990s has been a space where human rights language and concepts are constantly interrogated in the context of changing global realities. The women's movement rightly celebrates the recognition at the Vienna Conference of violence against women as a violation of human rights, and the recognition in the 1990s of rape as a war crime. Such developments should be seen as the articulation of human rights principles as applied to these issues, not as the 'creation' of 'new' human rights.

At the CSW 2005 the proposed sentence stating that the Beijing Platform for Action does not ‘create new human rights’ was not inserted in the Declaration. However, many of the States that made interventions after the agreement of the Declaration used the phrase, thereby tacitly giving a degree of validity to the United States position. The anti-abortion and anti-feminist organisations at the CSW were quick to point this out and claim a victory for those who oppose the expansion of human rights concepts.[18] The EU did not use the phrase in its intervention.
The UN human rights system is not perfect. But during the 1990s each world conference brought gains for women and expansion of the thinking on human rights. The openness to evolving human rights thinking is narrowing every year, and the moves of the United States at the 49th CSW represent a further attempt to narrow the definitions of human rights, to close down spaces for dialogue and to ensure that central human rights issues such as the recognition of rights relating to sexual orientation and the specific discriminations experienced by lesbian women, for example, are not recognised internationally.

That the Political Declaration was agreed by consensus and without the inclusion of the United States amendments is undoubtedly a very positive indication of the political will of the other UN member states to challenging the overbearing tactics and the regressive approach to human rights of the United States. However, assessed on its own terms as a UN document, the Declaration is weak: it contains no references to the future, no commitments to increase resources, and none of the agreed language of the Cairo Programme of Action on reproductive rights.

Positive as the reaffirmation in the Political Declaration of the intrinsic link between implementing the Beijing Platform for Action and achieving the Millennium Development Goals is in terms of NGO lobbying in relation to the Millennium Summit Follow-Up, September 2005, the contrast between the attention to development issues at the Beijing Conference, with its focus on equality, development and peace, and the CSW Beijing+10, was stark. Apart from specific events focusing on the MDGs, debate and discussion on sustainable development was extraordinarily low key. The United States seemed to be trying to take development out of even the Millennium Development Goals, and to focus the MDGs on security concerns and the ‘war against terror’.

The United States’ proposed amendments to the Political Declaration, and its references to the Human Rights Committee as ‘interfering’ with states sovereignty are clear indications of Bush administration antagonism both to linking abortion to human rights, and to the UN approach that sees human rights as an evolving framework. By focusing the debate at the informal consultations on it amendment, the United States was not only attempting to pre-empt the development of UN discourse on reproductive rights. By framing the amendment in terms of the ‘creation’ of a ‘right to abortion’, the United States was playing to the fears of Bush’s electoral stronghold. Playing to a domestic audience, Washington was constructing a caricature of the UN, of feminism and of progressive NGOs and governments as concerned only with abortion, and of the United States as the protector of traditional values and of the ‘family’.

The framing of the issues in the two resolutions proposed by the United States is indicative of its intention to dismantle the gains of the UN conferences of the 1990s, and to undermine the structural approach of UN treaties such as CEDAW and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. These treaties lay the groundwork for an approach to human rights that places obligations on governments to address root causes of inequality and of systemic violations of human rights by taking specific actions to redress such violations. This is expressed in the principles of interdependence, indivisibility and universality underlying the Beijing Platform for Action, and the principle of intersectionality introduced at the World Conference on Racism. Both United States resolutions were based on an interpretation of human rights founded in individualism (the individual women entrepreneur in the case of the economy, the individual client in the case of trafficking) and a narrow view of freedom, rather than the holistic, multifaceted and complex approach to human rights envisaged in the Beijing Platform for Action.
In the context of a UN gathering where the attitudes and positions of the United States dominated the agenda and the media attention, it is tempting to see the EU as a champion of progressive causes. To some degree this analysis is justified: in the negotiations on the resolution on ‘Women’s Economic Advancement’, the EU proposed amendments incorporating language from CEDAW on adopting temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality, eradicating gender stereotyping in the work place, and eliminating discrimination in the workplace, and also language on gender mainstreaming, collection of gender disaggregated statistics, and on the equal rights of women and men to decide freely the number and spacing of children and sharing family and household responsibilities, in the discussions was to. However, in terms of challenging neoliberalism, the EU is no champion: the centrality of a neoliberal model of ‘economic freedom’ in the United States resolution on the economy, and the resistance of the United States to accepting inclusion of agreed United States language on key development issues was of concern. At the Beijing+5 Review in 2000 the ‘buzz word’ was globalisation, and it was seen as imperative to bring a focus on macroeconomic issues in general and trade policy in particular into the UN human rights discourse. Apart from efforts by governments such as New Zealand and South Africa to raise these issues in the discussion on the economic advancement resolution, they were not major issues.

Conclusion

The annual meeting of the CSW is a key focal point for the review of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, of gender mainstreaming, and progress towards gender equality. However, like all intern-governmental gatherings, it is primarily concerned with configurations of power. The story of the 49th Session of the CSW is a story of United States isolation and the resistance of other member states. The United States attempted to introduce anti-abortion language into the Political Declaration, and failed, it tried to block the language of reproductive rights in the economic resolution, and failed. The Bush administration has just appointed an avowed critic of the UN, Robert Bolton, as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. How will he tell the story of the CSW? No doubt as one of the cumbersome inefficient process, slow and bureaucratic, and unable even to agree on basic principles and ‘common-sense’ ideas. And it is certainly true that the process of agreeing text at the UN, the endless nuancing of phrases and recycling of agreed language is slow, frustrating and tedious. The UN machinery and the annual meetings of the CSW are immensely complex: a reading of the media reports in the days after the Political Declaration was adopted made clear that everyone, from the United States, the Vatican, the so-called 'pro-life groups' , to the feminist groups, networks and organisations and progressive governments was claiming to a victory of sorts. And this, ultimately, is the nature of UN processes: there isn't one unambiguous outcome, there is no simple tally that can be made to sum up the process. Such a major meeting, with its lengthy series of preparatory conferences and panels, its mix of negotiation and plenary sessions, of diplomacy and advocacy produces multiple outcomes and multiple, sometimes complex readings of both text and of political positioning.

No one who attends a UN meeting, not the NGOs, not the officials, not the diplomats or the radicals think that they are there to change the world; no one believes that the UN is the most important force in world politics or that it has the power to implement the policies it generates. However, if the groaning old talking shop often seems like a waste of time and money, and the immense meetings rooms seem to produce little more than hot air and hot tempers, it is worth remembering that just by existing, the UN is a focus for radicalism and talk of transformation. It focuses the mind on the power of words: UN gatherings bring together thinkers and activists, poets and academics; the gathering together inside the UN building is only one side of the story.
Just by existing, the UN calls forth the energy of the women’s movement through paper and through the internet, there is a flow of energy and intellect into the papers and seminars, workshops and informal meetings that parallel the official meetings. And for every enervating session spent politely teasing out the acceptable phrases in the official meeting rooms, there is a parallel event where there is a meeting of minds, or a clash of ideas, or a sudden inspired articulation of a new problem, or a chance meeting of old friends or new allies. Spaces where women are prepared to spend three hours standing listening to new and challenging thinking after spending a day sitting listening to the drone of officialdom. And it is in these spaces, not in the official halls that the women’s movement thinks beyond Beijing and into the future. And when the two spaces converge, as they did in Beijing, at least in the myth of that conference, the creaking machine of the UN can produce radical texts and frame progressive agendas. It was this same slow, cumbersome process that produced the Beijing Platform for Action: when the political will is there again, who knows what it may produce?

[1] See also WIDE CSW report
[2] Ref Charlotte Bunch article
[3] See below, note 6.
[4] Banúlacht 2004 ‘Looking at the Economy through Women’s Eyes: a facilitator’s guide to economic literacy’, p. 125.
[5] See WIDE web site discussion forum on a Fifth World Conference, www.wide-net.org
[6] The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was established in 1946 and meets annually for a period of ten working days. The object of the CSW is to promote implementation of the principle that men and women have equal rights. The CSW makes recommendations to the UN on urgent problems requiring immediate attention in the field of women's rights, and carries out reviews of the critical areas of concern in the BPFA. The CSW consists of 45 members who are elected by the Economic and Social Council for a period of four years as follows: 13 from African states; 11 from Asian states; 4 from Eastern European states; 9 from Latin American and Caribbean states; 8 from Western European and other states. Source: www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw
[7] WIDE web site: www.wide-network.org
[8] See for example Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era (DAWN) www.dawn.org
[9] Five regional PrepComs were held for Beijing+10, for the ECE region (whihc includes not only the EU and other European states, the CIS (former Soviet), Central and Eastern European states, Central Asian republics (e.g. Azerbaijan, Belarus), Russian Federation, Turkey, but also Canada, Israel and the United States); the ECA (Economic Commission for Africa), ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean), ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific) and ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia – i.e. Middle East).
[10] The Bureau of the Commission on the Status of Women (forty-ninth session, 2005) comprised the following members: Kyung-wha Kang (Republic of Korea), Chairperson; Marine Davtyan (Republic of Armenia); Tebatso Future Baleseng (Botswana); Beatrice Maille (Canada); Carmen-Rosa Arias (Peru). While most member states send delegations to the CSW, and all delegations participate in the informal consultations, only the 45 members of the CSW may vote.
[11] The second amendment, would have changed the wording of the final paragraph to state that “the need to ensure that the integration of a gender perspective” was justified for the preparations, but not for the outcome of the High Level Plenary Meeting on the Review of the Millennium Declaration.
[12] The UN Human Rights Committee is the body of independent experts elected by the UN General Assembly that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (source: www. ohchr.org)
[13] Human Rights Committee 82nd Session December 2004, CCPR/CO/82/POL (Source reporting by CGWL on CSW informal consultations 25th Feb 2005)
[14] I.e. CEDAW
[15] IWTC Women’s Globalnet #274 ‘Turning Promises into Progress’: Statement of the Linkage Caucus From the 49th Session of the CSW March 11, 2005. www.iwtc.org
[16] The resolutions were: (1) Reducing demand for trafficking women and girls (tabled by the United States); (2) considering the advisability of a Special Rapporteur on laws that discriminate against women (Rwanda); (3) women’s economic advancement (United States); (4) women, the girl child and HIV/AIDS (Mauritius); (5) mainstreaming a gender perspective into national policies and programmes (United Kingdom and Bangladesh); (6) integrating a gender perspective in post-disaster relief efforts, particularly in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster (Philippines); (7) situation of and assistance to Palestinian women (tabled by Jamaica for the Group of 77); (8) support for the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), (Philippines); (9) indigenous women (tabled by Bolivia); (10) and the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan (tabled by Luxemburg for the European Union). All ten were passed. The matter of appointing a Special Rapporteur will be taken up at the CSW 50th Session in 2006 (the Special Rapporteur will be appointed by and would report to the CSW for an initial period of three years, the first such position to be created by the CSW.

[17] Reporting by the ICFTU, the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership and DAWN
[18] So called ‘Pro-life’ NGOs quote comments made by the CEDAW Committee and the Human Rights Committee, as well as by NGOs, as evidence that the Beijing Platform for Action, Cairo Programme of Action and CEDAW are being ‘blatantly misinterpreted and used to promote abortion’. For groups such as the NGO Pro-Life/Pro-Family Coalition, unequivocal reaffirmation of documents such as the Beijing documents contribute to the establishment a right to abortion as part of customary international law. (Source: flyers supporting the United States amendment circulated by the the NGO Pro-Life/Pro-Family Coalition).