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
Movement to recognize women’s rights "revolutionary and uplifting"
The movement to recognize and support women’s rights was one of the most revolutionary and uplifting forces now shaping the world, the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly was told this morning. The Secretary of State of the United States, Madeleine Albright, said that after Beijing, it was no longer possible to deny that women’s rights were human rights, and were indivisible from the universal rights of every human being.
The call from Beijing was a call to action, Ms. Albright said, and the United States had responded. Efforts had been intensified to gain approval from the Senate of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Also, a major global initiative had been launched to halt trafficking in human beings. The benefits of globalization must be shared not just by some people in some countries, but by all people in every country. Accordingly, efforts must be redoubled to make education and training more available, so that poverty retreats and opportunity spreads.
The Minister for Labour and Social Affairs of Iraq, Saidi T. Abbas, and Romaine Ndorimana, Minister for Social and Women's Affairs of Burundi, drew attention to the adverse impact sanctions against States had on the situation of women and children in those States. Mr. Abbas told the Assembly that sanctions constituted a crime against humanity and the progress achieved by Iraqi women on the cultural, social and economic levels had been undermined by the imposition and continuation of the embargo and the accompanying collapse of Iraq's infrastructure. Ms. Ndorimana said the terrible effects of the embargo on her country could be felt even after its suspension.
Ministers of Hungary, Kazakhstan, Finland, Mongolia, Solomon Islands and Oman, and representatives of Turkmenistan, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Brunei Darussalam and New Zealand as well as a Minister from the Palestinian Authority addressed the Assembly.
Afternoon Session
Women continue to be deprived of basic and fundamental rights
It was a sad and sobering reality that women continued to be deprived of basic and fundamental rights because of measures imposed in certain countries, the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly was told this afternoon.
Stressing that systematic rape, torture and abuse continued to be weapons of choice in armed conflict, the Attorney General and Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Bahamas, Janet Bostwick, said that at every opportunity, it was necessary to denounce those ills and demand universal respect for the rights of women. She added that it was also necessary to take a closer look at many of the achievements, evaluating if they were broadly distributed, or confined to the countries which had already been making strides towards the advancement of women prior to Beijing.
The Beijing Platform for Action had identified mainstreaming of women's issues as one of its priority areas, the Minister for Gender Equality of Denmark, Jytte Andersen, said. Mainstreaming was not about integrating women into existing structures. It was about changing those structures, for both women and men to participate on an equal footing in the development of society. Partnership, or a new “social contract” between women and men, should clarify women’s contribution to the economy, as well as the contribution of men to family life. Professional and family responsibilities must go hand in hand.
Ministers from Togo, Ethiopia, Botswana, Poland, Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Equatorial Guinea addressed the meeting this afternoon. The Deputy Minister of Justice of Bulgaria; Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Argentina; Coordinator of the Social Cabinet of Nicaragua; and representatives of Saudi Arabia, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Monaco and Georgia also spoke.
Complete Statements For Thursday
Media Coverage
Include Women in Peace Process, Panelists Say
CNN
In many wars, women become strategic targets of the battling factions, whether they're involved in the fighting or not. In Kosovo and Bosnia, Serb forces were accused of using systematic rape as one of their tools of conquest. In World War II, thousands of Korean women were forced to become sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. Angela King, a U.N. special adviser on gender issues, told a panel on Wednesday that women should be included in all stages of peacemaking -- from the negotiation of a peace settlement, to confidence-building measures, to the re- establishment of democracy. "Women and men can experience conflicts differently" and both perspectives must be included in the process of peace- building, King said.
Familiar Tensions Rise at Global Women's Conference
Reuters/ABC News
Hours before the end of a week-long U.N. meeting to review progress on women's equality, familiar tensions escalated in negotiating rooms on lifestyles, abortion, religion, the family and sexual rights in general. Women's groups from Turkey, India and Colombia blamed the Vatican and some Islamic nations for stalling the talks, while American abortion foes said the West was foisting "sexual colonialism" on the world.
Beijing+5 Needs Public Scrutiny
About.com Pro-Life Views
Guide Christina Dunigan reports on Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) objections to the Beijing+5 proceedings. "In its official pronouncements the United Nations insists upon what is termed 'transparency' which means all meetings should be open at least to limited public view." C-FAM notes. "The reality at the ongoing Beijing+5 negotiations falls well short of the rhetoric. As days of talks for the new Beijing+5 document grind on, the most important meetings are taking place in secret."
Highlights: Thursday, June 8