Women's One World

After Beijing: Making the Promises Come True

By Marcia L. Mason

"We have a lot of differences within the women's movement, but we seem to be able to overcome them. We have maintained the strength of the movement." -Delegate from Bangladesh at the United Nations' Beijing Women's Conference

The overarching theme of the Beijing conference was that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights.

This awareness was translated into the conference's final document, a 130-page encyclopedia of women's issues and human rights concerns. It identified five key priorities:

1. alleviating the burden of poverty on women;
2. confronting violence against women, particularly domestic violence and the use of rape as a weapon of war;
3. promoting equal sharing of family responsibilities;
4. encouraging women's and girls' literacy and universal access to education;
5. eliminating discrimination and prejudice against girls.

The Beijing women's conference marked the culmination of a 20-year journey toward recognition and implementation of women's rights.

Now the challenge is to insure that governments act on their stated commitments to respect women's rights and to help women improve their social and economic status. Nongovernmental organizations, the main catalysts for much of what has been achieved to date, are currently working to sustain the momentum generated in Beijing and to build on the creative energy unleashed during the conference.

The Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), a leader among those NGOs, has issued a report assessing the progress during the past year toward fulfilling the pledges made by governments at Beijing.

Mechanisms are being devised for implementing conference declarations, as put forth in the so-called Platform for Action. Ad hoc commissions are being established, most of them within the various governments' foreign affairs or women's ministries. In many cases, WEDO lists the telephone numbers of the specific official in charge of implementing a particular commitment.

Experience shows that political will is the most important factor in turning words into action.

Significantly, many of the parliamentarians and congresswomen attending the conference returned from Beijing highly motivated to use their power on behalf of other women. Female elected officials have taken part in televised public debates on the implementation and monitoring of commitments made at the conference. Women legislators are also working to amend discriminatory laws and have identified bills to be pushed as special priorities. Some of these lawmakers are seeking to have unpaid work-such as house maintenance, child care and assistance to seniors-included within the realm of employee protections.

What about the resources to support these commitments?

While many new activities have been announced, few countries, paradoxically, are actually allocating funds to implement the Platform of Action.

Some governments say they are redistributing existing resources in order to support these activities. But in other cases, resources earmarked for women have been dramatically decreased. It is hard to say whether these cuts are the result of sexism or are by-products of the worldwide trend toward reduced social assistance.

The Netherlands is one of a very few countries that has approved additional funding for implementation of the Platform of Action. Norway likewise deserves credit for having increased the allotments it sets aside for women's programs in developing countries. South Africa is the only country to report that it may redirect some military expenditures toward women's economic empowerment.

Steps are also being taken to defend the well-being of children-which was one of the key concerns raised at Beijing.

Cambodia, for example, has established a Child Rights Protection Committee; and in Nepal a bill on child rights has been introduced in Parliament. Next year, Norway will hold an international meeting on child labor.

What sort of leadership is being exhibited by the United States, the world's most powerful country?

One step has been to establish an Interagency Council on Women composed of high-level representatives from each federal agency. It is charged with policy development and public outreach to implement the Platform for Action. In addition to holding monthly public meetings to discuss its work, the Council has developed a presence on the Internet in order to make information as widely available as possible.

Women's groups and NGOs concerned with women's rights appear to be concentrating on monitoring governmental actions taken post-Beijing and on raising money to facilitate progress. Many leaders of women's groups regularly speak in public about the conference, often making creative use of theater, radio and art.

Efforts are also being made to forge linkages to forthcoming U.N. conferences and pending international agreements, including the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women.

Much of the follow-through activity currently underway is making use of lessons derived from previous attempts to transform rhetorical promises into realities. In the aftermath of earlier U.N. conferences, many women delegates remained in touch with one another and pressured their respective governments to implement agreed-upon commitments.

They said, in effect, "We've had a lot of words on equality; now we want action."

One of the first such experiences transpired in the aftermath of the 1993 U.N. human rights conference in Vienna. It was at that gathering that the nation-states of the world finally and clearly stated that women's rights are human rights.

Many of the female delegates to the Vienna talks had built working relationships with one another. And so, by the time of the 1994 U.N. conference on population, reproductive rights, and development, many women were well prepared for the discussions concerning fundamental rights that took place at that gathering in Cairo.

At the next major international conclave-the U.N.'s Copenhagen session on global social issues-each country's head of state was urged to detail what he or she was prepared to do in regard to improving women's status in society.

Women built their networking and political skills over a twenty-year journey. It was at framework sessions, convened in Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia, that nongovernmental organizations emerged as significant voices on the global scene.

It is to the NGOs' credit that many nations felt compelled in Beijing to make additional commitments to further women's rights.

"NGOs," said Bella Abzug, founder of the Women's Environment and Development Organization, "are really people saying what they need and want. They tell it to governments, tell it to communities, tell it to the United Nations, and tell it to the nations of the world."

At the Beijing conference itself, women's groups put priority on encouraging governments to implement their previous commitments. NGOs did not allow governments to back out of their earlier agreements, although some did indeed try to do so.

According to Abzug, "NGOs live in the present and plan for the future. They believe that changes can take place. Because if we change life for women, we change it for men and we change it for our children-we change it for everybody."

The Women's Linkage Caucus, a group representing 73 countries, grew out of these collective experiences and has become a particularly potent force. In Beijing, for instance, it managed to win adoption of nearly 90 percent of the recommendations it put forth.

One further step the Caucus needs to take is to develop its consciousness of women's world citizenship status. With that awareness will come the realization that the United Nations is essentially powerless, due directly to the dysfunctional nature of the nation-state system. From there, it is a comparatively short step to establishing world law and the subsequent enforcement of that law through world courts.

Note: Much of this information was taken from a program in the U.S. Public TV series, "Rights and Wrongs: Human Rights Television." In this particular installment, entitled "The Journey Since the Historic Beijing Conference," series host Charlayne Hunter-Gault interviewed Bella Abzug about progress made during the past year. Copies of the show may be ordered from Globalvision, Inc., 1600 Broadway, New York, NY 10019 (212) 246-0202. Refer specifically to "Show No. 406-Women."

Marcia Mason is a feminist, Quaker, peace activist, world citizen, and World Syntegrity Project alumna who lives in Burlington, Vermont.