Five years after The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, a Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly is being held in New York this week to review the progress made toward implementing the Beijing Platform for Action, and to recommend new actions and initiatives.
The U.N. issues daily official press releases on both the Special Session and other matters. A complete listing of all press releases is available at the United Nations News Centre. The Special Session is also being webcast live. (Requires updated RealPlayer program.) The press releases listed below are specifically about the Special Session. These releases offer a general view of the focus of each session, and provide brief summaries of the statements of each speaker during that day's official activities. The sections quoted below are merely a few of the statements I found most interesting. The complete statement of each speaker (as distributed for the meeting - changes may have been made in the text when delivered) is also available from the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women.
U.N. Press Releases
Morning Session
"Beijing Platform For Action" Implementation Review Continues
The special session of the General Assembly -- "Women 2000, Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century" -- continued its review of the implementation of the Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) this morning, hearing from 16 speakers.
The Minister of Women’s Affairs and Social Security of the Maldives, Raashida Yoosuf, told the Assembly that in working towards the Beijing Platform of Action’s goals, most countries had had to face age-old beliefs and practices that perpetuated injustices and continued to give women a subordinate status. A major drawback in assessing the growing menace of violence against women was its invisibility, which was mainly due to the social stigma attached to the victims of abuse. Changing the perceptions of men and women on gender roles was central to all.
Urging delegates to recognize that prevailing conditions at the local level, whether social, political or economic, had a direct bearing on the pace at which progress towards the goals of Beijing was made, Princess Basma Bint Talal, Head of the Jordanian National Commission for Women, said the diversity of cultures, religions and interests were factors that must be given due consideration. Rather than diminishing indigenous values and traditions, developing countries would like to see a global vision that fostered harmony instead of discord, and would create an enabling climate for national initiatives to flourish.
The Assembly also heard from the Deputy Prime Minister of Albania, Ministers from Algeria, Senegal, Panama, Lesotho, Haiti, the Vice-Minister in charge of Advancement of Women, Family and Social Affairs of Djibouti, the Special Envoy of the President of Uruguay, the Representative of the Prime Minister of Belize, and the Counselor, General People's Congress of Libya.
Also this morning, the Assembly decided to allow representatives from five selected non-governmental organizations to make statements in the debate in the plenary of the special session. Their statements will be limited to five minutes. The five non-governmental organizations are: Women in Law and Development in Africa; Mahila Dakshati Samiti; Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women; Centro de la Mujer Peruana "Flora Tristan"; and Alliance for Arab Women.
Afternoon Session
Closing Statement by General Assembly President
In his closing statement to to the Assembly’s twenty-third special session “Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century” the President of the General Assembly, Theo-Ben Gurirab (Namibia) commended the delegates for a job well done, and looked forward to the upcoming Special Session on Social Development in Geneva. (Full statement)
What a difference a day makes, ladies and gentlemen! We are now at the stage where we had hoped to be 24 hours ago. Hours of round-the-clock negotiations finally paid off, and we have just adopted a document to move the global agenda for the advancement of women beyond the Platform for Action adopted at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women.
The road has been long and arduous, but we can now breathe a collective sigh of relief. For, as I always knew we would, Member States reached agreement, at this twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, on an outcome document which will chart the course for further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. That Platform, as everyone in this Hall knows, identified 12 critical areas of concern affecting women’s lives.
We can all congratulate ourselves for a job well done. There was no backward movement on any of the Beijing language and commitments. That Platform, with its numerous proposals for action, remains fully valid for national and international actions. Indeed, the text we have just adopted updates the Beijing Platform, further strengthening the document in the areas of violence against women; trafficking in women; health, including the right to sexual and reproductive health; education; human rights; poverty, debt relief and globalization; armed conflict; sovereignty; land and inheritance rights for women; political participation and decision making.
Complete Statements For Friday (Includes NGO Statements)
Media Coverage
Women's Conference Drafts Health, Economic Statement
CNN.com
Delegates to the U.N. women's conference Friday agreed to language in a document calling for criminalization of domestic violence and for men to take more responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Sources close to the negotiations said one of the main sticking points on the language of the final document continued to be any recognition of "sexual rights" or "sexual orientation" -- promoted by more liberal delegates and scorned by conservative groups that say "sexual colonialism" by Western nations demeans developing countries. In addition, countries like Cuba and Iran wanted the final communiquŽ to note the impact of economic sanctions on women and children. The United States opposes such a measure.
Women's Forum Stuggles With Abortion, Sex Rights
AP/Yahoo!
In the last hours of a U.N. women's conference, thousands of women negotiators, pressured by nearly 1,300 activist groups, worked on a final document to further equality between the sexes as set out in a pivotal action program framed in 1995 at a huge U.N. global women's conference in Beijing. The so-called Beijing-Plus-Five meeting, which began Monday, has been torn by charges from more liberal groups that the Vatican and some Islamic countries are trying to roll back gains for women articulated five years ago in China. The United States wrangled with Iran and Cuba -- which are both under U.S. economic sanctions -- over a plank about the impact of such sanctions on women and children.
Hightlights: Friday, June 9