Beijing Plus Five makes no progress

By Debra H. Yatim

NEW YORK (JP): The United Nations Headquarters, surrounding grounds, and adjoining building have quietened down. The array of women in their colorful headdresses and glorious national costumes have disappeared. Some to attend further conferences and face more work elsewhere, the majority to their home countries where immense work still awaits them.

For at the end of the 23rd special session of the UN General Assembly held here on June 5-9, humankind discovered that good intentions are not enough.

The session was a meeting known as the Beijing Plus Five, held to assess progress in five years after a historical World Conference on Women in Beijing.

As it happens, most of the 189 governments that in 1995 had adopted a Platform for Action on specific objectives for governments, the international community, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector -- to improve the economic, political and social status of the world's women and girls -- have decided in 2000 to go back on their word, or at least have dithered over sentences to maintain the status quo.

And the status quo in many countries disadvantages women.

In 1995, nearly 6,000 delegates from 189 countries came to the UN Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing. Some 30,000 women participated in a parallel Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Forum and departed full of energy to press for the full implementation of the agreed vision, called the Platform for Action.

Where the Platform is being implemented, enormous changes have bettered the lives of millions of women and their families. Where it has been ignored, it is needed more than ever.

That was why, five years later, every women, child, family, and nation has a stake in knowing how well, and where, the Platform for Action had been made for real. They also need to recognize and understand the obstacles that impede the Platform's implementation.

The Beijing Platform for Action outlined 12 critical areas of concern, and set strategic objectives toward women's full human rights and equality with men.

These 12 strategic objectives included the issues of poverty, health, armed conflict, power and decision making, media, the girl child, education and training, violence, the economy, institutional mechanisms, the environment, and human rights.

A report by the UN Development Fund for Women, or UNIFEM, examined the progress of women from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. It said some specific targets and a timetable for reaching those targets were made by UN conferences in the 1990s, and identified three key findings:

* The UN Conference on Women in Beijing agreed on a target for closing the gender gap in primary and secondary education by the year 2005. This had been widely emphasized as the target for progress towards gender equality and the empowerment of women.

* But, there were no targets for improving women's economic position or reducing the "feminization of poverty."

* Meanwhile, the Beijing Platform for Action affirmed that women should have at least 30 percent share of decision-making positions.

To see what progress had been made towards gender equality, gender-sensitive indicators were needed. The report then used as a starting point three gender-sensitive indicators that had been agreed upon by the UN:

* The ratio of girls enrollment to boy's enrollment ratio in secondary schools;

* Female share of paid employment in non-agricultural activities (i.e. industry and services);

* Women's share of seats in national parliament.

In all three counts, only a very few countries passed muster. That meant most of the 189 countries were not really committed to a document that, as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said at the Beijing Plus Five opening, was "amazing and was rivaled only by the UN Charter itself in 1945".

UNIFEM discovered that on the matter of gender equality in secondary education enrollment by 1999, only 11 percent of countries had achieved gender equality, while 51 percent had lower enrollment ratio for girls than boys.

On women's share of paid employment in industry and services, the share ranged from a high of 54 percent in the Ukraine and Latvia to a low of 5 percent in Chad in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Beijing document had declared that paid employment was important because it put money in women's hands. On a happy note, women's share had increased in most regions, including Indonesia, according to the report made by Indonesian State Minister for the Empowerment of Women, Khofifah Indar Parawansa.

But, said the UNIFEM report, the quality of employment had not increased in the same way, and may even have deteriorated. "Women's jobs tend to enjoy less social protection and employment rights than do men's jobs", the report said.

On the matter of women's share of seats in parliament, only eight countries had achieved a level of 30 percent or more; Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, Germany, and South Africa.

While the share had increased in many countries, it had also fallen in some countries in all regions -- including Indonesia, which statistics reveal an all time low of less than 5 percent after last year's Indonesian general election.

So where do we go from here?

In the words of the UN General Assembly President Theo Ben- Gurirab of Namibia, "Despite progress, women's concerns are still treated as a 'second priority' virtually everywhere." In some cases, he added, women's needs are ignored altogether.

By all respects, the Beijing Plus Five gathering identified that women continue to face discrimination and marginalization, both subtle and blatant.

The women of Arab countries pointed this out most succinctly in their demonstration outside the UN Headquarters Building on June 7.

"While our government officials in the UN meeting are stating one thing, we the women of the Arab countries are saying that most of those statements are one-sided," cried out a participant.

Meanwhile, women still do not equally share the fruits of production. While women constitute 70 percent of the world's poor, we still have a very long way to go in achieving the goals set out in the Beijing Platform for Action, said Catherine Bertini, executive director of the World Food Program.

"For each delegate to this conference," she told the opening of the meeting, "there are more than a million hungry women." But there women must have a voice. And we must give them that voice, she added.

The World Food Program under her stewardship is convinced that "if you want to make sure hungry people are fed, you have to target women, because women are the shortest route to ending hunger."

The World Food Program holds out a little known fact: eight of 10 farmers in Africa are women, and six out of 10 in Asia. In one household in three worldwide, women are the sole breadwinners. "Targeting women in ... hunger relief is not just a matter of equity -- it is a matter of efficiency," she added.

If in 1995, women all over the world had high hopes for a slightly better future in the new millennium, some say those hopes have been dashed in the Beijing Plus Five talks.

But even though women continue to be grossly underrepresented in the higher echelons of decision-making at virtually every political level, one bright beacon did shine forth during that hectic week when some 7,000 NGO women converged on the huge bustle that is New York City.

This was one of the last sessions on June 9, attended by many Indonesian delegates and members of some 50 Indonesian NGOs, and titled "Women: The New Leadership in UN Agencies."

That most energizing panel discussion featured Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the World Health Organization; Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund; Catherine Bertini, executive director of the World Food Program; Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef; and Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

They showed participants what happens when women take the reins: "Fifty percent of women on all levels," said Bertini.

"More funds allocated for women in dire straits," said Bellamy.

"More health services directed towards women," said Brundtland.

"A better understanding that women have special needs differing from men," said Sadik.

Moderator Patricia Ellis, executive director of the Women's Foreign Policy Group, delivered an anecdote: "When I was in grade school I went on a tour of the UN headquarters building, and decided that I, too, would like to work here. But bearing in mind the limited choice for little girls then, my ambition was to be ... the tour guide."

The best quote came from Mary Robinson. More women in powerful positions in the UN meant "better role models for little girls with ambitions."

Taking into account that in that panel at least two of the women, herself and Brundtland, had already been heads of state -- Robinson as former president of Ireland, and Brundtland as former prime minister of Norway -- the only course we have is to take her word for it.

The writer, an advocate for women's rights, was a participant of the above Beijing Plus Five meeting.