Beijing + 10

The 49th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women: A Fractious Session With a Heartening Outcome

UN Headquarters, February 28- March 11, 2005

Report by Mary P. Haney for the National Council for Research on Women

Introduction

The 49th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), held at UN Headquarters in New York from February 28 to March 11, 2005, was designed to be a simpler option than holding a major UN conference to commemorate and evaluate the results of The Fourth World Conference on Women held 10 years ago in Beijing. The CSW meeting’s priority agenda was threefold: to obtain reaffirmation of the recommendations in the two documents, the Platform for Action and the Beijing Declaration, that were adopted in Beijing; to determine the extent of world-wide implementation of those recommendations; and to urge governments to do more to achieve global equality for women.

The importance that many governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) attached to this two-week Beijing + 10 event was demonstrated by the widespread participation. One hundred and sixty-five UN member states sent to New York a total of some 1,800 official delegates, including government ministers from more than 80 countries, to attend a meeting sponsored by a UN commission that has only 45 members. Also attending were 2,600 representatives of NGOs from every region of the world. They played a crucial role in the session’s outcome.

Participation by Civil Society

Because there was no NGO forum planned for this meeting (as there had been at many previous UN issue-focused conferences and certainly at all those related to women’s issues) the 2,600 accredited representatives of civil society asserted their influence on the meeting in two ways. At a political level, they sought to influence the outcome by using the caucus format-- groupings based on geographic region and /or on specific issues of primary concern. The latter included, for example, economic empowerment, indigenous women, Youth for Women’s Rights, health, diverse sexualities, HIV/AIDS, Islam, trade, trafficking, and the linkage between Beijing and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Some of those caucuses came together by e-mail before the meeting opened; others were spin-offs from already established networks; and some were formed on the spot. One, the Linkage Caucus, convened at this session by three NGOs--Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), and the NGO Committee on the Status of Women--has been in existence since the 1995 Beijing conference.

On a nonpolitical and more substantive level, all accredited international NGOs were invited by the CSW Secretariat, the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), to submit proposals for what were called “Parallel Side Events”—seminars and workshops—on relevant women’s issues that met outside the UN building in the Church Centre across the street. Throughout the CSW session, more than 250 such NGO programs convened on at least 80 different topics. Most of them attracted standing-room-only crowds. They covered an impressive variety of topics ranging from HIV/AIDS, sex work, and poverty to the “Billings Ovulation Method,” the MDGs, and women’s leadership in Rwanda.

NGO involvement in this CSW was also evident before the meeting opened. In anticipation of Beijing + 10, WEDO prepared an ambitious and comprehensive report, “Beijing Betrayed--Women Worldwide Report that Governments Have Failed to Turn the Platform into Action.” It is an impressive 200-page document that reflects opinions from 150 countries.

The NGO Committee on the Status of Women was responsible for assembling a “shadow report” that contains international NGOs’ responses to the same questionnaire to which the UN Secretary-General asked governments to respond. It is entitled “Ten Years After Beijing: Still More Promises Than Progress.”

A day-long NGO consultation was held the weekend before the CSW session began. Some 300 people were expected; 700 attended. The NGO program reflected the important role that regional and thematic NGO caucuses now play at UN meetings. It also anticipated the attention that was to be paid at the official conference to the necessity of linking the contents of the Beijing and Beijing + 5 conference documents to the Millennium Development Goals, which were developed in 2000 and are to be reviewed at a UN Summit in September 2005 to ensure the integration of a gender perspective in the outcome of the Summit.

Other nonofficial activities integrated into the two weeks of the CSW Session included the DAW-directed “High-Level Panels” that took place in UN conference rooms. They dealt with a variety of complex subjects related to current women’s issues in the UN. The panelists were experts from country delegations, the UN Secretariat, and civil society.

The idea of women’s using the NGO caucus system for “working” a UN meeting was introduced by the late Bella Abzug (cofounder and cochair of WEDO) in the early 1990s when she assembled the first international women’s caucus at the preparatory meetings preceding the UN Conference on Environment and Development (held in Rio in 1992). Her intention was to ensure that the women NGO representatives accredited to official UN conferences would be well informed on the issues on the conference agenda of particular concern to women as well as familiar with the techniques for successful lobbying their country delegates. Since then, that approach has become an established part of how NGOs operate at UN meetings.

The Official Meetings

The primary purpose of the 49th CSW session was to achieve consensus-based approval of a one-page, seemingly innocuous “Political Declaration” designed to reaffirm the documents adopted at the Beijing and Beijing + 5 conferences; to pledge that actions would be undertaken “to ensure full and accelerated implementation” of those documents’ recommendations; to emphasize the linkage between that implementation and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, into which a gender perspective must be integrated; * to recognize the mutually reinforcing nature of those documents and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); and finally, to call upon all the actors involved in the Beijing process, including civil society, to commit themselves to implementing the documents adopted at the two earlier meetings.

Agreement on the Political Declaration was anticipated during the first few days of the Commission meeting with a rather routine vote. However, an intervention by the U.S. Delegation shattered those expectations, and that first week turned into a contentious and complex political event.

With scant advance notice, the U.S. Delegation submitted two amendments to the Declaration that threatened the success of the entire session. The most problematic of the two amendments injected the always controversial issue of abortion into the debate and undercut the strong reaffirmation of earlier agreements that was the Commission’s objective. The proposed U.S. amendment would have inserted the caveat “…reaffirming that they [the documents] do not create any new international human rights, and that they do not include the right to abortion.” Originally, it was rumored that two countries, Egypt and Qatar, along with the Vatican, would support the U.S. However, as more and more countries declared their opposition--not just to the U.S. amendment but to the idea of any amendments--and as almost all members of the NGO regional and issue-oriented caucuses rose up in a very organized and sophisticated fury about the amendments’ subject matter as well as the notion of any amendments at all, the U.S. became more and more isolated. Many NGOs not only lobbied their delegates at the site, but some of them also got in touch with ministries in their home governments to encourage them to oppose amending the Declaration. They were astonishingly successful, even with respect to a country like Poland, which still criminalizes abortion, as well as with the often very conservative countries of Latin America and the Middle East. In the end, the U.S. stood alone with the Vatican in support of amending the Declaration.

It was not until Friday, March 4, of that first week that the U.S. Delegation announced, to the cheers of several thousand women assembled in two large UN conference rooms, that it was withdrawing its amendments. Thus the U.S. joined the consensus, but it did not do so without requesting that two-page “explanation of position” be attached to the conference report. In that paper, the U.S. sought to justify its week-long insistence on adding amendments to the Declaration. It included reiteration of the U.S. Government’s opposition to abortion and to the use of quotas for the advancement of women, and a statement of its belief in the value of abstinence as an “approach [along with condom use, ‘where appropriate,’] in comprehensive strategies to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.”

Previously, on March 3 at a meeting with U.S. NGOs at the U.S. Mission to the U.N., in response to a question, Ambassador Ellen R. Sauerbrey had said that by proposing the amendment the U.S. Delegation was seeking “clear understanding of what Beijing does and does not do.” **

Three other countries-- Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama--also submitted “explanations of positions.”

Everybody took credit for that outcome. Having witnessed the speed and intelligence with which the NGO caucus participants went about their work, I believe their members are all entitled to a share of the credit. Their well-organized and politically astute contribution to the eventual defeat of the U.S. government’s efforts to thwart the Commission’s intention to achieve an unambiguous and unanimous reaffirmation of Beijing’s proposals testifies to the successful application of the lessons learned from Bella Abzug and her associates.

In addition to the Political Declaration, the CSW dealt with a number of resolutions submitted by member states. Some of them, such as one related to the situation of girls and women in Afghanistan and assistance to Palestinian women, had been submitted at previous meetings, but six of them were new to the CSW. They concerned gender mainstreaming in national policies and programs; the possible appointment of a special rapporteur on discrimination against women (introduced by Rwanda and crafted by the NGO, Equality Now); indigenous women (introduced by Bolivia and inspired by the indigenous women’s networks in attendance at the meeting); integration of a gender perspective in post-disaster relief efforts; economic advancement of women; and trafficking of women and children. The latter two resolutions were introduced by the U.S. Delegation and adopted only after they were significantly amended.

The U.S. trafficking resolution had much to commend it, but it was also amended as a result of a team effort by women’s NGOs, experts on the issue, and delegates from New Zealand and South Africa, before being adopted by the CSW. Originally, that resolution had mentioned banning prostitution as a means of curbing trafficking and sex tourism, and introduced the issues of labor migration and intergovernmental security policies. Furthermore, it did not deal with the root causes of trafficking, such as poverty, inequality, and violence. The U.S. resolution neither mentioned human rights issues nor the UN Protocol on the subject that is already in place--The Palermo UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking In Persons, Especially Women and Children. As adopted without a vote, the resolution does include, as the U.S. proposed, a call on governments to criminalize trafficking in all its forms and to condemn and penalize traffickers and intermediaries. It also urges governments to ensure protection of and assistance to victims while respecting their human rights.

The Labor Caucus (representing global unions), which was allied with some of the more progressive women’s organizations, successfully lobbied governments to amend the text of the U.S. resolution on the economic advancement of women. The new language incorporated into the resolution dealt with sexual and reproductive health rights, the role of the public sector, and recognition of the negative impact of globalization. It also included references to the International Labour Organization (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the ILO Conventions that related to women’s rights at work. The U.S. was opposed to those changes submitted by Cuba and South Africa and withdrew its sponsorship. The discussions of this and other matters took so long to complete that the CSW had to meet again in special session on March 22, 2005, to finish its work and adopt by consensus the economic advancement resolution as amended.

As one might expect, not every NGO representative at the meeting agreed with the majority opposition to the U.S. position. I was told that there was a group of about 70 U.S. NGOs, accredited to attend the meeting who were of the right-to-life persuasion; they included members of religious communities. They strongly supported the proposed U.S. amendments to the draft of the Political Declaration. They also appeared to favor the original U.S. language in the resolution on trafficking. Others who supported the U.S. included some NGO representatives from the Philippines and members of the Asian and Latin American regional caucuses.

Conclusion

From my perspective, this CSW session turned out in many ways to be worthy of its agenda to affirm and ensure implementation of the Beijing documents and to relate them to the needs of the 21 st century. For one thing, the interest in this meeting was unprecedented and unexpected. Initially, 6,000 NGO women advocates from all over the world registered for the session; in the end, 2,600 attended. They came from everywhere. I have never seen so many African women at a UN meeting in New York. Representatives of Eastern and Central European and the former Soviet Union women’s organizations were also there in probably greater numbers than at any previous UN meeting since the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) Beijing preparatory meeting in Vienna in 1994.

The vitality, diversity (including an unusually large group of young women), and political savvy of the assemblage of civil society representatives could leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that a thriving global women’s movement has emerged since the first international women’s conference, the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City 30 years ago. Working effectively with their governments, they ensured unequivocal reaffirmation of women’s rights as enunciated in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The variety and substantive depth of the hundreds of NGO side events also testify to the extent of that movement’s involvement in the implementation of those documents in their own countries as well as internationally.

The civil society representatives also contributed to the meeting’s emphasis on strategies for the future. Among other things, they organized women’s support for linking the Beijing commitments to the UN Millennium Development Goals, thereby hoping to ensure that an outcome of the forthcoming Millennium Summit would be the implementation of the MDGs with a clear gender perspective. And, as Lydia Alpiar entitled her summary of the meeting written for AWID, “Women’s Human Rights and Gender Equality Prevailed.” ( ***).

Footnotes:
*Throughout the course of the CSW meeting, there were frequent references to the necessity of linking the language of Beijing with the language of the MDGs to ensure that the latter reflect a gender perspective. In his remarks that opened the session, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan referred to the report of the Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality and cited the seven specific investments and policies to be applied on a scale large enough “to change the historical legacy that puts women at a disadvantage in most societies.” In addition, there were a number of NGO meetings on the subject of that linkage during the CSW, and the Central and Eastern European/CIS Caucus (under the leadership of Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, Soros Foundation) joined with the Linkage Caucus to issue a statement during the session entitled, “ONE AGENDA,” on that subject.

** It was a puzzle why there was any doubt regarding “what Beijing does and does not do” concerning abortion. For example, the Beijing document, the Platform for Action, states in the section on women’s health, Art. 106, that the responsibilities of government include: “j) Recognize and deal with the impact of unsafe abortion as a major public health concern, k)”…In no case should abortion be promoted as a means of family planning…Any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at national or local level according to the national legislative process.”

*** Summary of the 49 th CSW Session, by Lydia Alpiar, AWID, as presented in e-mail of March 21, 2005, resource@awid.org.