The session was divided into a Plenary and a Committee of the Whole (COW); the latter dealt with the outcome document. The COW was divided into two Working Groups: #1, concerned with the "Introduction, Achievements and Obstacles to Implementation," and "Current Challenges to Implementation," and #2, concerned with "Actions and Initiatives to Overcome Obstacles to the Achievement of Full Implementation of the Platform for Action."

Because the UN requires that delegates reach consensus on language to be included in a document, negotiations are often protracted and difficult. Four Contact Groups dealt with the most contentious issues, including those related to women in armed conflict, the girl child, the impact of globalization, reproductive health and "services," family, debt burden and relief, diversity (mostly "sexual orientation"), inheritance and land ownership, and human rights.

OUTCOME DOCUMENT

The unedited final document that was adopted by consensus at the Special session is 44 pages long and covers multiple issues and procedures (as in the original Beijing document) plus a number of important new topics noted below. It reaffirms the 150-page PFA (to which, it should be noted a number of countries attached reservations). Because the outcome document covers a multiplicity of issues and procedures, it is not possible to deal in this paper with more than a few. Citations here will focus on successful efforts to move forward and on those areas in which such efforts were thwarted. (The choices as to what aspects of the document should be highlighted were made by the author of this brief report and not by the National Council for Research on Women.) It is important to add that delegates to the +5 meeting were instructed that there was to be no "reinvention" of the PFA. Because of attempts to do just that, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was compelled to remind delegates of those instructions half way through the deliberations.

These are some of the areas in which the final consensus document demonstrates notable progress beyond the PFA:

1) calling for prosecution in cases of domestic violence and trafficking of women and girls for economic and sexual exploitation;

2) mentioning under the category of domestic violence, for the first time in an international consensus document, forced marriage and honor killings and asking for stronger action against dowry-related violence and marital rape (although the impact of the latter is diluted by a sentence that refers to domestic violence as being treated as a private matter in some countries);

3) defining sexual violence during wartime as a war crime (after some debate, reference was made to "increasing knowledge of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding forms of sexual violence and war crimes in order to prevent, prosecute, and redress such crimes");

4) adding references to the negative impact on women of HIV/AIDS;

5) agreeing to language on "women's full and equal rights to own and control land and other property including through the right to inheritance";

6) encouraging a "high awareness of the harmful effects of certain traditional or customary practices affecting women's health";

7) calling on governments to set a target date of 2005 for eliminating the gender gap in primary and secondary education and for striving to remove discriminatory provisions and gender insensitive gaps in national legislation;

8) citing the roles that men and boys can play, including in regard to family planning and the use of contraception, if gender equality is to be achieved;

9) holding firm on Beijing language related to women's reproductive and sexual health, including retention of PFA paragraph #96, which recognizes women's right to have control over matters related to reproduction and sexuality;

10) using ICPD + 5 language on abortion (the original International Conference on Population and Development was held in Cairo in 1994) considered by some delegates to represent a post-Beijing gain in regard to its reference to that issue: "governments should consider reviewing laws containing punitive measures against women who have obtained illegal abortions";

11) recognizing the principle of asylum on the grounds of gender-based persecution;

12) adopting stronger language on the feminization of poverty, globalization, and the need to assess the links between macro-economic policy and gender.

Where there were failures to strengthen the Beijing text, they generally reflected the debates at that earlier conference, particularly regarding efforts to move beyond the ICPD + 5 language on the abortion issue and to include references to sexual rights and sexual orientation. There was a particularly intense battle the final night of the conference over issues related to reproductive health. The language of both Beijing and ICPD+ 5 were reaffirmed to the extent that it is specifically restated that "reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in international law, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health." (art. 107 g. ter). As was the case previously, a large number of countries entered reservations on those portions of the document.

As in regard to the PFA, of particular concern to NGOs is the document's lack of concrete benchmarks, quantitative and time-bound targets, and indicators. Also, as with the Beijing process, the question remains how to obtain the resources that are required to ensure implementation?

In his closing remarks to the final General Assembly plenary, President Theo-Ben-Guirab (Namibia) said that "the outcome document moved the global agenda on women's advancement beyond the PFA, particularly on issues relating to violence, trafficking, poverty, education, debt relief, globalization, inheritance rights, political participation and decision-making, and health, including the right to sexual and reproductive health." The final session ended at 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, June 10.

POLITICAL DYNAMICS

The Special Session was arduous, lengthy, and contentious. According to several experienced UN hands, the meeting was the most difficult, and certainly the most sleep- depriving, of any they had experienced. The possibility of achieving agreement on a document that held the line on Beijing and Cairo seemed so dim by mid-week that NGOs began to refer to the meeting as "Beijing minus five."

The "Earth Negotiations Bulletin" (vol. 14, no. 46; June 16, 2000), says that the countries that dominated much of the discussions were the members of the so-called JUSCANZ (Japan, USA, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and of the EU "blocs," as well as the "seven sisters," as they came to be called--Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Syria and Algeria. Those seven represent a spin off from the more established G-77/China bloc (developing countries), which has had more and more trouble in recent time achieving consensus among its members (now numbering more than 130 rather than 77) and began to split up as a group in Beijing over health issues. During the also argumentative "intersessionals" on Beijing + 5 held between the March 2000 Beijing + 5 preparatory meetings and the Special Session, the G77/China bloc made almost no collective statements. The continued and apparently more serious splintering of this important bloc at Beijing + 5 portends a consequential alteration in the political dynamics at the UN.

At the New York meeting, the so-called "seven sisters" attempted, sometimes successfully, to prevent inclusion in the document of the more progressive human and reproductive rights language advanced by Northern representatives, accusing the latter of practicing "sexual colonialism." At the same time, a larger group of Southern countries, including representatives of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, favored more progressive positions, and a number of those that had previously stood with the Holy See at the Beijing meeting did not do so in New York.

In regard to participation by countries of the North, the "Earth Negotiations Bulletin"cited earlier states: "A few commentators noted that while the EU and JUSCANZ appeared to follow a progressive line on human rights issues, they did little to support the root causes of women's lack of equality, such as poor access to economic and political power." That latter point is supported by the following statement delivered by a U.S. delegate, a JUSCANZ member, during the closing session of the plenary: "The United States must request that the record of today's proceedings reflect that the U.S disassociates itself from the paragraphs in the Outcome Document currently number 29, 30ter and 135i, dealing with globalization and economic issues [the debt burden and debt servicing]….These paragraphs characterize globalization and debt as significant obstacles to achieving gender equality. It is our view that national governments bear the primary responsibility for social and economic development, and for ensuring equality for women in all walks of life. Most aspects of equality for women have no direct link to international economic and financial issues."

That withholding of support was announced during the final minutes of the Special Session. It came as a surprise to many on the U.S. Delegation, particularly since they had officially informed the U.S. NGOs at more than one of the daily briefings that there was a sense that progress was being made on the references to globalization in the document. Furthermore, at the first post-Beijing + 5 briefing for U.S. NGOs conducted at the State Department on June 23, 2000, by the President's Interagency Council on Women, Theresa Loar, director of the Council, announced that further clarification of the U.S. remarks at the final plenary would be issued. She said that the statement as made does not accurately reflect the Clinton administration's policy about the relationship between women's roles and the global economy. In that regard, she referred to the U.S. Secretary of State's speech of June 8, 2000, before a Plenary of the Special Session in which she said, "Together we must strive to see that the benefits of globalization are shared not just by some people in some countries, but by all people in every country. As Hillary Clinton said on Monday, 'when it comes to women, globalization should not mean marginalization….We must learn more about the positive and negative impacts of globalizations and trade on the lives of women…."

NGO PARTICIPATION

Leading NGO representatives from a number of countries that had played prominent roles in the series of UN conferences held during the 1990s, including Beijing, smarted under the lack of access to delegates caused by strict security and the complexity and erratic nature of the process. This was despite the fact that the General Assembly had approved the pre-Beijing + 5 prepcom recommendation to broaden participation by NGOs in the Special Session through a special application process that permitted inclusion of NGOs that were neither in consultative status with ECOSOC nor accredited to attend the 1995 Beijing conference.

Several delegations, including the US, made a real effort to be transparent about their positions and the status of negotiations and to hold daily meetings with their NGOs. The workload for delegation members and the grinding demands of 17-hour days made it almost impossible for delegations with the best of intentions to conduct the kind of substantive discussions to which NGOs had become accustomed. As "The Earth Negotiations Bulletin" points out, NGOs felt that their "watch-dog" role was eliminated, and many of them have concluded that "much of the progress toward women's equality happens locally and nationally and [as a result of] agreements made in the regional preparatory meetings…."

Southern NGOs complained that Northern--particularly U.S.--NGOs focused too intensely on reproductive health issues at the expense of those basic economic concerns that are paramount to women in the South.

At the same time, the session and its counterpart NGO programs demonstrated that the global women's movement is alive and well and growing in talent, diversity, and breadth of interest and knowledge. That was the real story of the conference. As the U.S. representative to the Commission on the Status of Women, Ambassador Linda Tarr- Whelan, was heard to say at a post-Special Session briefing at the U.S. State Department, "At this meeting we solidified the Beijing document into a movement."

Substantive NGO-sponsored issue- and geographic-oriented meetings and caucuses were held in venues located from one end of Manhattan to the other. The day before the session started, the NGO schedule began at a Columbia University site with a major, all- day "Symposium on Future Directions for Human Rights" organized by the Center for Women's Global Leadership in collaboration with many other NGOs, and ended on the last day of the session (June 9) at the tip of the island in the U.S. Custom House with programs on, among other topics, "Beyond Beijing" (sponsored by U.S. Women Connect), "Women and Internalized Oppression" (sponsored by No Limits for Women), and "Ending Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan" (sponsored by the Feminist Majority Foundation). The National Council for Research on Women (NCRW) joined with the Center for the Study of Women and Society and The Japan Preparatory Committee, Year 2000 Project, to sponsor an ambitious four-day "global feminist symposia" on "Feminisms and Globalization," held in midtown Manhattan at the City University Graduate Center.

Initially, many of the NGO Beijing + 5 workshops, seminars, training programs, lectures, and caucuses were sponsored by host country (U.S.) groups and by UNIFEM--all of them included international participants. As the week wore on, a large number of NGO meetings were added to the original list, some with international sponsorship. In the end, NGOs could chose from among more than 300 scheduled and spontaneous programs, an art exhibit, a film festival, theatrical performances, training sessions, book launchings, and numerous celebratory parties. In addition, to keep track of all that was going on, three newspapers with varying political and cultural perspectives came out daily.

Credit for the successful organization of this enormous effort must be given to the U.S. Host Committee in which about 60 representatives of U.S. NGOs took part led by co- chairs Ellen Chesler (Open Society Institute), Sister Dorothy Ann Kelly (College of New Rochelle), Barbara Arnwine (Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights), and Kavita Ramdas (Global Fund for Women). That group coordinated and facilitated all the programs scheduled in advance of the Session.

Finally, of unique importance, an "NGO Alternative Global Report" was prepared for the Special Session by the Conference of Nongovernmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the UN (CONGO) and the International NGO Coordinating Committee. Representing 116 alternative reports from every one of the world's regions (15 are regional, 59 represent countries, and 14 focus on issues), the publication was conceived as an alternative to the reports that governments were asked to submit to the Secretary-General assessing progress made in each of their countries in implementing the Beijing PFA. Much of it is critical of governmental action—or inaction—in response to the document's recommendations. The section on "Emerging Issues" is particularly informative and refers to problems associated with globalization, privatization, new social problems, alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, communalization of society, and aging, among others.

Media coverage of the Special Session was more extensive than is usually the case with UN conferences, and particularly those billed as "women's meetings." Kathy Bonk of the Communications Consortium in Washington, DC, was responsible for the establishment of a Media Activity Centre, funded primarily by the Ford Foundation and staffed by about 15 correspondents representing the world's TV, radio, and print media. Each of them staffed regional media desks and presented their stories in their native language. Of the 1200 media representatives accredited to attend the Session, 100 represented non-U.S. media.

MPHaney June 30, 2000