Our Girl at the U.N.: Something new blows through the halls - United Nations Commission on the Status of Women conference

National Review, April 8, 2002 by Kate O'Beirne

The United Nations

The first meeting of the 46th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women opened on March 4 with its first-ever election of a man-Tunisia's Othman Jerandi-as "chairperson." I had just arrived for my two-week stint as a U.S. delegate to the commission, and I figured that this crossing of the gender divide meant that my multilingual militant sisters had turned soft on men. Over the coming days, I was to learn the sadder truth: The feminist agenda has been so wildly successful at the U.N., with "gender mainstreaming" now all the rage, that real hostility emerges only when it's time to block some U.S. proposal. The U.N. prides itself on its organizing principle of "consensus," but delights in defining this term to mean ideas embraced by everyone but the U.N.'s single largest benefactor.

This year's delegation, which was led by conservative stalwart Ellen Sauerbrey (twice the GOP nominee for governor of Maryland) and included Nancy Pfotenhauer of the Independent Women's Forum and Winsome Packer, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, clearly signaled that there had been a change in management at the State Department: We've come a long way from Beijing, baby. Hillary Clinton is no longer running the international sisterhood show. Over the years, conservative pro-family non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have tirelessly patrolled the U.N., on guard against the establishment of "international rights" to engage in behaviors that most parents have nightmares over. They expect that the U.S. delegations will now be composed of their allies; feeling like the new girls at a peculiar kind of high school, we were grateful for their friendly faces.

The commission met in a large conference room in the basement of the U.N., far from the carpeted grandeur of the Security Council and General Assembly. The linoleum floors, pale green walls, snack bar, and bulletin boards littered with flyers on available activities (e.g., a panel discussion on "Getting Reproductive Health Results through Microcredit Interventions in Cost-effective Ways: Evidence from the Field") contributed to the U.N. High atmosphere. The multilingual conversations, espresso, Pellegrino, tiramisu, and laissez-faire policy on smoking evidenced a disproportionate number of foreign-exchange students. But that old dynamic was present: In this case, there were popular girls, and then there were the Americans.

As our class assignment, we were to tackle two themes in this annual session and reach "agreed conclusions" on them. The first week was devoted to listening to "inputs" from experts about "eradicating poverty, including through the empowerment of women throughout their life cycle in a globalizing world" and "environmental management and mitigation of natural disasters: a gender perspective." Owing to Ellen Sauerbrey's terrific "intervention" in response to one of the expert panels, we were quickly on the receiving end of "inputs" from Clinton- friendly NGOs that were less than pleased with the composition of the new U.S. delegation. Following one expert's assertion that "poverty does not just happen," Sauerbrey pointed out that "prosperity is not an accident" either: Its prerequisites include respect for human rights, the rule of law, property rights, and democratic governments. Later that day, a couple of dozen earnest older women representing liberal NGOs dragged their heavy canvas bags stuffed with reports, brochures, and meeting alerts ("We Are Pleased To Inform You That We Have Successfully Secured Space For a Linkage Caucus!!") across the street to the Church Center to scold the U.S. delegation. One woman complained that Sauerbrey had prompted "gasps" in the gallery, because her remarks were "quite arrogant and quite a put-down to other countries." Three days into our diplomatic gig, we were beginning to appreciate the demands of international comity.

But we had an agenda to put forward. Our U.S. resolution had to do with the "Situation of Women and Girls in Afghanistan"; during the second week we hosted lengthy "informals" on a daily basis so other delegations could modify our draft in order to reach the all-important "consensus." Our straightforward two-and-a-half-page draft, simply encouraging the Interim and Transitional Authorities to address the rights and needs of women and girls, grew to eight pages of specific prescriptive advice from our "negotiating partners." For example-in a country, remember, where housing and food are scarce and only 5 percent of women are literate-all government ministries were instructed to "develop their capacity to mainstream a gender perspective into their programs."

At every session, the European Union-represented by Paloma, a clever and charming young delegate from Spain-had further modifications, all immediately echoed by a non-EU delegate from Canada, Switzerland, or Australia, who was eager to be aligned with the popular girls. All of these serious young women were veteran delegates, some from their country's "Women's Ministry," who could cite chapter and verse from an intimidating number of previous U.N. documents to bolster the case that accepted U.N. doctrine and procedure must be strictly followed.