wfn.org | U.N. special session aims at refining Beijing goals

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

June 9, 2000 News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-23-71B{270}

NOTE: This report is accompanied by a sidebar, UMNS story #271.
 
UNITED NATIONS (UMNS) - Representatives of about 1,100 nongovernmental
organizations joined more than 180 governmental delegations June 5-9 to
assess progress made in the five years since the Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing.

Delegates to the United Nations meeting were expected to finalize the
"Platform for Action" created in 1995, which outlined goals toward advancing
women in society and protecting their human rights. They also were to
discuss measurable targets and indicators of those goals.

In conjunction with the U.N. special session, nicknamed "Beijing Plus 5,"
dozens of related activities occurred daily at the United Methodist-owned
Church Center for the United Nations and in other venues around New York.

One of the participants was Darlene Amon of Suffolk, Va., representing the
Women's Division, United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. She was among
the more than 30,000 women who had gathered in Beijing and watched as nearly
6,000 official delegates from 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action.

Not a binding treaty, the platform defines strategic objective and actions
to be taken by the international community, national governments,
nongovernmental groups and the private sector. In general, it supports
increased economic opportunity for women, laws and policies that strengthen
families, protection of human rights and special protection for girls,
education for all, improvements in health care for women and girls,
increased participation in decision-making and protection for the
environment.

The platform condemns some specific practices and situations, such as job
discrimination, female infanticide and dowry-related violence.

Amon said she left Beijing "with a sense of accomplishment," particularly
since the United States was to establish the President's Interagency Council
on Women. She has followed that group's activities via the Internet "so that
I know there have been advances." 

However, she expressed concern that the U.S. Congress still has not ratified
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the U.N. General Assembly and considered
an international bill of rights for women.

In 1998, United Methodist Women sent nearly 10,000 handwritten letters to
the U.S. Senate, where CEDAW has been languishing, urging its ratification.
The United States is the only western democracy that has not endorsed the
document.

During a June 8 briefing sponsored by the U.N.'s Department of Public
Information, it was noted that nearly 150 nations had sent in reports on how
they have implemented Platform for Action goals. "There's a strong ownership
behind the Beijing platform," said Yakin Erturk, director of the Division
for the Advancement of Women, U.N. Department of Economic and Social
Affairs.

Concerns raised by those reports, according to the International Women's
Tribune Centre, include:

·	Women have not significantly increased their participation in power
and decision-making.
·	Women constitute 70 percent of the world's poor.
·	Women do not benefit equally from economic development.
·	Women continue to fear violence in their homes and communities, and
in conflict zones.

Negotiations on the finalized version of the platform continued throughout
the special session and have been "multifaceted," Amon said. Reaching
agreement is a complex process, she said.

Gita Sen, a professor from India who works with an organization called
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, said in the U.N. briefing
that a "very, very small minority of countries" had stalled progress on a
final platform document since the March preparatory meetings. But, for a
variety of reasons, the work was able to proceed again once the special
session started, she explained.

"The good news is that things aren't as bad as they were a few days ago," a
member of the Zambia delegation reported during a June 8 briefing for
nongovernmental organizations. "There is a sense that the Beijing consensus
will stand."

The Zambia delegate said that her delegation, as well as those of other
African countries, had arrived at the United Nations with clear concerns
regarding the issues of debt relief, education, health, protection of girls
and violence against women. They are pleased with how those issues are being
addressed in the platform, she added.

One of the Swiss government representatives to Beijing Plus 5 was Claudia
Bloem, a United Methodist and lawyer from Geneva. She also served as a
delegate to the denomination's General Conference in May in Cleveland. Her
mother, Renate Bloem, is the U.N. representative in Geneva for the World
Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women and is president of the NGO
(nongovernmental organization) Committee on the Status of Women there.
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United Methodist News Service
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