NGOs discontent with women's plan of action

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)