NGOs discontent with women's plan of action

JAKARTA (JP): Officials at an Asian Pacific women conference sailed through the process of drafting a plan of action for the region's development of women, ignoring calls from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for stronger statements.

"There was no serious debate," said the Philippines' Patricia B. Liucanan who chaired the drafting committee. Most delegates of the 50 participating countries agreed about what constitutes the most pressing of women's problems, she added.

The drafting committee in the conference sponsored by the UN- Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific (ESCAP) was expected to complete their task late yesterday.

The Plan of Action for Women in Asia and the Pacific will include a statement of purpose, a global and regional overview, and six critical areas of concern in the region.

The six are access to power, education and literacy, health, participation in economic activities, poverty and women's rights as human rights.

The documents will be discussed today in a plenary session.

The final documents of the plan of action will be adopted at next week's ministerial meeting on women in development, to be opened Monday by President Soeharto.

According to Liucanan, heated debates ensued only because of the different perspectives of the delegates on what they considered to be the main issues.

Due to differences of experiences, for instance, some Pacific countries' delegates had not fought for strong wording on the poverty problem and its increasing feminization as vehemently as some Asian countries delegates.

Another group of officials were working yesterday to complete the draft of the Jakarta Declaration, to be read at the end of the ministerial meeting.

However an activist of the Asian Cultural Forum on Development (ACFOD), Nigat Said Khan, said governments had not been prepared to critically review the documents, while NGOs were unprepared to deal with the Conference mechanism.

Neelam Hussain, spokeswoman of the Asia Pacific Women's Action Network (APWAN), said she was able to influence the plan of action's concepts but her views on the contents were ignored.

APWAN also objected to the drafted Jakarta Declaration which reaffirms an individual country's competence to formulate and implement its policies on the advancement of women, "mindful of their cultures, value and tradition as well as social economic and political conditions".

Hussain thought that the wording was "dangerous" because it created too much leeway for the abuse of women's rights in the name of national values and traditions.

In self criticism, Said Khan, who is also the author of the book Feminism in South Asia said they could hardly expect a UN body to "to listen to (them), when they rarely listen to individual countries".

The NGOs activists, she asserted, "have been naive and inexperienced with the UN system".

"The wording of ideas is much too long."

Nevertheless, Khan believed that the process was beneficial. As an example, she noted that ten years ago almost no UN forums paid attention to the problem of violence against women.

"Some of our NGO's ideas may sound radical now, but who knows, ten years from now some people may adopt them," she said.

Several delegates from Indonesia said NGO activists often took too much time before handing in their concepts to the formal, country delegates. Others said that NGOs who were not in internal agreement posed major constraint for their own efforts. (swe/anr)