Holding on to the promise - Women's Human Rights and the Beijing +5 review - Women and Human Rights - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

WIN News, Spring, 2002

EDITED BY CYNTHIA MEILLON IN COLLABORATION WITH CHARLOTTE BUNCH - May 2001

CENTER FOR WOMEN'S GLOBAL LEADERSHIP, RUTGERS, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY

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DISTRIBUTED BY: WOMEN, INK.

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CONTENTS:

"Introduction // Beijing +5: Beginning and Ending with Women's Human Rights // The Symposium // Part I: Current Challenges in Women's Human Rights // Part II: Innovative Praxis // Section 2: Women's Economic Rights: Challenging the Structures of Injustice // Beijing +5 Analysis // Appendix.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: BEIJING +5: BEGINNING AND ENDING WITH WOMEN's HUMAN RIGHTS:

"In 1995, Delegates from 189 countries met in Beijing, China to participate in the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. The meeting,.. marked over twenty years of activism to win guarantees from governments that concrete measures would at last be taken to put an end to the unequal treatment women face in nearly every country and culture. The conference culminated in consensus agreement on the Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Platform for Action.

The wording of the Beijing documents was gradually shaped out of lengthy and sometimes contentious negotiations among governments, in which old patterns and traditions of discrimination against women were frequently challenged. Of the two, the Platform for Action (PFA) is by far the most important; its wording and content clearly reflect the influence of countless women who fought for decades to have discrimination against women officially recognized and addressed. The Beijing Platform builds on the work of the three previous world conferences on women (Mexico City, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980; and Nairobi, 1985), but it goes beyond them in asserting women's rights as human rights and in the specificity of commitments to action to ensure respect for women's rights.

The results of the Platform for Action have been far reaching. In countries where United Nations treaties and agreements carry the weight of law, women have been able to use the PFA to prod their governments to repeal legislation that worked against women... The Platform for Action is the most comprehensive expression of governments' commitments to human rights for women and girls that has ever been produced. Divided into twelve 'critical areas of concern,' it identifies the most important sites of discrimination against women and outlines actions for change that are to be taken at the national and international levels.

At Beijing, it was decided that governments would meet again in five years' time to evaluate how much progress they had made toward implementing the PFA. This evaluation process, which would end with a Special Session of the UN General Assembly in June 2000, came to be known as the Beijing +5 Review, or B +5.

B +5: FIGHTING FOR I-IMPLEMENTATION

In keeping with UN procedure, a formal document was developed for negotiation through preparatory sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women. This 'Outcomes Document' listed achievements and obstacles that governments experienced in trying to fulfill the promises they made in the twelve Critical Areas of Concern during the Beijing conference.

Women committed to achieving women's full human rights hoped to use Beijing +5 to push for ways to speed up and strengthen implementation of the PFA. . . Women's rights activists from around the world made their way to New York for the international Preparatory Meetings (PrepComs) and to the regional Beijing +5 meetings that took place in Asia Pacific, Africa, Europe/North America, and Latin America. . .

FOCUSING ON WOMEN'S ORGANIZING

The book is divided into two sections. The first contains a series of speeches and presentations from a human rights symposium that was organized by the Global Center on the eve of the UN Special Session. 'Women 2000: A Symposium on Future Directions for Human Rights' was designed to provide a rallying point for women before entering the final stage of Beijing +5 process. Over 1,300 people attended the six-hour event, which was held at Columbia University.

Rather than hearing testimony about cases of abuse, the audience was presented with specific examples of how women are using the tools available to them (and in some cases, inventing new ones) to organize locally, regionally and globally to demand and defend their human rights . .

"The symposium brought together women's human rights activists who are doing innovative organizing work in their own countries. Their testimonies served to illustrate, not only the tremendous amount of creativity with which women are addressing human rights issues, but also new and emerging trends in human rights abuses internationally. The presentations were preceded by keynote speeches by women whose commitment to human rights goes back many years, which provided an overview of the achievements and the current state of the movement for women's human rights.

For this publication, the testimonies and speeches have been edited and annotated in order to make them as accessible as possible. . .