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
Seventeen Speakers Describe Efforts To Achieve Gender Equality
Many speakers outlined their Governments' legislative efforts to ensure gender equality, as well as the steps to empower women and increase their participation in decision-making processes. They also described the main obstacles encountered by their countries. Most delegates noted the wage gap between the sexes, saying that women were still concentrated in low-income sectors of labour markets. Unemployment was high among women, and many of them encountered difficulties in seeking credit and receiving adequate training and health care. Most Governments were making efforts to bring women into the mainstream of public life and increase awareness of women's issues.
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Employment of Belgium, Laurette Onkelinx, said that it was crucial to develop international labour standards that would affect the attainment of equality in the workplace. Three other priorities included measures to combat violence against women; enforcement of sexual reproductive rights; and development cooperation. Further, the process by which the developed countries promised to contribute 0.7 per cent of gross national product to official development assistance to help eradicate poverty must be fulfilled.
Also speaking in the debate were: Ministers from Cambodia, Costa Rica and Nigeria (on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China), the Vice- President of the National Assembly of the Lao People's Democratic Republic; the Senior Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Community Development of Singapore; General Coordinator of the National Commission for Women of Mexico; Chairperson of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women of the Philippines; President of the Council of "Comunidade Solidaria" of Brazil; Chairperson of the National Committee on Women of Sri Lanka; the First Lady of Lebanon; Uganda’s Minister for People with Disabilities and the Elderly; and the representative of Tajikistan.
Afternoon Session
Speakers emphasize womens' right to equality in decision-making and power roles.
The Chairperson of Liberia's delegation, Jewel Howard Taylor, cited several factors that continued to impinge on efforts to implement the Beijing Platform for Action, including continued civil conflict and strife around Africa, indebtedness and high repayment rates, inadequate grant/aid packages, regional and international trade barriers, and inadequate capacity- building at all levels. "It has been five years since Beijing, and we are still grappling with the concept of gender equality", she said. Governments were still giving women “token” positions in areas where their presence hardly makes a difference.
Adviser to the President and Head of the Centre for Women's Participation of Iran, Zahra Shojaei, said the Beijing outcome represented a delicate compromise among competing value systems and outlooks on such sensitive concepts and issues as family, marriage, sexuality and reproduction, which played a central role in the life of all societies. ... given the existing differences on the definition, interpretation and application of fundamental concepts regarding the status and rights of women, as individuals, in the family and in society, future success on a global scale for women required collective efforts in determining a common normative framework, which should derive from various living value systems.
Ministers of Malawi, Mozambique, Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Estonia, Kenya, Syria, Rwanda, Swaziland, Norway, Burkina Faso, and representatives of Bhutan, Federated States of Micronesia, Qatar, Malta and Austria also addressed the Assembly this afternoon.
Complete Statements For Wednesday
Media Coverage
AIDS, Poverty, Sexual Trafficking Concerns Raised
CNN
In Africa, women infected with the HIV virus now outnumber infected men. Nearly two-thirds of the world's illiterate people are women, more than 70 percent of women live in poverty, and trafficking of women and girls is estimated to be an $8- billion-a-year industry, according to advocates for women attending a U.N.-sponsored conference this week.
Activists Spar Over Final Document
Reuters/ABC News
Women's rights activists accused the Vatican and some Islamic and Catholic countries of blocking consensus on a U.N. document to accelerate the drive for equality of the sexes. A coalition of anti-abortion and religious activists countered that they had far more support for their conservative approach to women's rights and blamed rich Western states for pushing "radical language" on sexual rights, homosexual rights and abortion for stalling negotiations.
Highlights: Wednesday, June 7