A battle and some reverses

The 49th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, held at the United Nations headquarters in New York to review the progress made in improving women's condition in the 10 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, fails to live up to expectations.

ASHA KRISHNAKUMAR in New York

THIRTY years after the United Nations' first meeting on women in Mexico City and 10 years after the historic Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the U.N. is yet to come to terms with the pathetic condition of women the world over. Most of the resolutions and agreements remain only on paper, and women continue to remain voiceless, powerless and faceless.

Braving snow, rain, cold and wind, unusual weather in New York for this time of the year, over 6,000 delegates - U.N. officials, government representatives, policy-makers, activists, women's rights advocates, and representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academic institutions and the media - met at the U.N. headquarters for two weeks beginning February 28 for the 49th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which reviewed the progress made on the "Women's Human Rights Agreement", better known as the Beijing Platform for Action. They primarily strove to "reaffirm" the pledges signed 10 years ago in Beijing. In 1995, the Beijing Conference had ended with some 30,000 women and a few men - the largest gathering in any such U.N. conference - reaffirming with much enthusiasm the rights of women for equality, development and peace. It also came out with the 150-page Beijing Platform for Action, endorsed by 189 countries. Now, the enthusiasm seems to have dimmed.

At Beijing-Plus-Ten, the mood was subdued and more reflective, with the participants seemingly having come to terms with the fact that the promises held out in Beijing were not easy to achieve. For women, the road remained rocky, twisted, and strewn with obstacles. While countries that signed the Beijing Platform for Action presented reports on the status of women, several U.N. agencies and women's groups presented alternative report cards. Then, there were the usual high-level meetings, round-table dialogue, closed-door discussions, panel conferences, and workshops, besides parallel sessions by civil society groups. Yet, no decisive step forward was taken. Worse, many came away with the feeling that they had moved a few steps backwards.

The conference itself started on a note of controversy as the United States pushed for an amendment on the issue of women's right to abortion. The Beijing declaration had reaffirmed the "right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility". A 150-page document attached to the declaration said that abortion should be safe where it is legal and women should not be punished for having one. It left the legal decision to each country. The U.S. wanted to backtrack on this. Its envoy, Ellen Sauerbrey, said that "there is no fundamental right to abortion", and blamed NGOs for "trying to hijack" the issue and make abortion a right. This drew some strong reactions. Said Nicole Ameline, France's Minister for Parity and Equality: "It is very important not to give the impression to the world that there is a step back or that there are interpretations of this issue." Finally, by the end of the week, an isolated U.S. agreed to reinstate the Beijing agreement.

The tone for the discussions was set by the report - based on a survey of 135 countries on the status of women - of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which assessed the progress made towards meeting the commitments made in Beijing. The conference focussed on 12 areas, including poverty, environment, economy, education, human rights, power and decision-making, and the girl child. According to the Secretary-General's report, many countries had made progress by introducing new laws and through legal reforms to reduce discrimination and violence against women. Governments, the report said, had established several institutional mechanisms to advance gender equality. "In all regions, improvements have been made in education, poverty reduction, women's health and participation in public life." The setting up of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was highlighted as a major step for the promotion of women's rights. But, according to June Zeitlin, Executive Director, Women's Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), the realities documented by women often contrast sharply with the official reports of governments.

"Beijing Betrayed", the 207-page fifth report compiled by the WEDO, delivers a strong message: "The women of the world don't need any more words from their governments - they want action, they want resources and they want governments to protect and advance women's human rights." The WEDO report on the status of women in 150 countries concludes that many women across the world are worse off today than they were 10 years ago, and accuses governments of failing to keep their pledge to achieve equality of the sexes. Governments have adopted a "piecemeal and incremental" approach to furthering women's rights, and that cannot achieve the goals set in Beijing.

Even as delegates from 130 countries were touting the actions their governments have taken to achieve equality for women, June Zeitlin said at a news conference called to release the report: "What we see are powerful trends - growing poverty, inequality, growing militarisation, and fundamentalist opposition to women's rights. These trends are harming millions of women worldwide." While trafficking of women and children into bonded sweatshop labour, forced marriage, forced prostitution, and domestic servitude have become global issues, the report said that governments did not appear to be making significant efforts to combat those crimes. According to the report, up to 1,75,000 women from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are being drawn into the sex industry in Western Europe every year, and there has been "a dramatic increase" in the number of women trafficked to North America from countries of the former Soviet bloc. The report listed what it called "the dirty dozen" countries - Bahrain, Kuwait, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, the United Arab Emirates and Guinea-Bissau - that have no women in their parliaments.

Another alternative report, by the Israel Women's Group, said that women are still discriminated against in the workplace, in part because the labour laws are not implemented. The hourly wage of women is often just about half that of their male equivalents. In the same job, women work, on an average, twice as long as men. Very few women are self-employed, partly because banks are more hesitant to approve loans to women and because there are no adequate support systems for self-employed women. According to the report, the vast majority of school textbooks perpetuate stereotypes that discriminate against women, and the rate of illiteracy among women is double that among men. Globally, economic trends such as globalisation, trade liberalisation, migration and privatisation have left women further enervated. There is also a global trend away from full-time to flexible and casual employment because of outsourcing and contract labour.

In many countries, women are increasingly found in low-paying, irregular jobs with poor working conditions and without social benefits, leading to increasing rates of poverty among women. While the men in developing countries are also affected because of the policies of liberalisation and globalisation, the problem is acute among women.

Ironically, at a U.N. conference to promote women's rights, some NGOs such as Human Rights Watch questioned the world body's moral locus standi to negotiate women's rights. The U.N. had lost its rights to fight for women's rights, some delegates argued, because of the surging traffic in underage commercial sex workers in Bosnia in 2001. The traffic was not only created by the arrival of tens of thousands of male U.N. personnel, who sought commercial sex workers, but also by the behind-the-scenes involvement of U.N. personnel. The female staff member who blew the whistle was fired; she was exonerated but only after the evidence unfolded. A U.N. expert involved in the $700-million-a-year effort to rebuild war-ravaged Bosnia was charged with serial rape and child sexual abuse. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, too, some 50 U.N. personnel face about 150 allegations of sexual abuse, most of them involving children. It is derisively called "the sex-for-food scandal" because children traded sex for the handful of food they needed to survive.

Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch says: "The U.N. is there for their protection. So when the protectors become violators, this is particularly egregious." The abuse is largely seen as a byproduct of the immunity from law enjoyed by U.N. personnel. This, according to David Ross, an American investigative journalist, is because the peacekeeping troops from U.N. member-states are accountable only to their own governments. U.N. civilian employees enjoy immunity from local prosecution and as a result charges are not brought up against them where they are stationed. Perhaps this explains why investigative reports now suggest that sexual abuse by U.N. "peacekeepers" is a worldwide phenomenon. The U.N. tends to stonewall such accusations despite professing a "zero tolerance" policy towards sexual abuse. When ABC news channel's programme 20/20 confronted William Swing, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, he blamed the problem on a small number of miscreants. He emphasised that remedial measures, such as curfews and prohibition against fraternisation with commercial sex workers, were being taken.

Refreshingly, one of the most powerful critics of the U.N. system from within was Nafis Sadik, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. She told a packed audience, who had gathered at the Main Conference Room to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, that women had to break power structures and be at the policy-making table to improve their lives. And that, she said, was not easy with the international community making it difficult for them to do so. She stressed that there was "so much to do and we need to move on", which means "investing in infrastructure beneficial to women, increasing their role in policy-making and guaranteeing their rights to sexual and reproductive health, property ownership, inheritance and equality in employment". She also pointed out that the U.N. needed to rationalise its institutions, have a clear policy direction that would impact national governments, be more aggressive at all levels in encouraging member-states to promote and protect the human rights of women and girls, and mobilise the political will to promote gender issues.

Barbara Crossette, a former international affairs correspondent of The New York Times, said the goals set at the Beijing Conference would be dead letter if women were not provided a critical role in policy-making. Women at the grassroots made great decisions that had tremendous ramifications, but such women were never part of national delegations, she said. There was, thus, a need for a strong voice that was sensitive to women's needs on national delegations, she emphasised. Delivering an address on International Women's Day, Rachael Mayanja, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, said: "The (Beijing) review has exposed the gaps in implementation." This, according to Nafis Sadik, is largely because of lack of funds. She explained: "The global military expenditure is over $900 billion. Expenditure by the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] countries on development assistance is less than $70 billion. About $3 billion of that goes towards gender equality." She said: "What contributes more to security, the $3 billion invested in women or the $900 billion squandered on weapons? It is time for political leaders to stop talking about peace and start investing in it."

But Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, struck a positive note by saying that legal and policy frameworks for gender equality were in place. The challenge now was to enforce the laws that had been put in place and translate existing policies into concrete programmes that benefited women and girls. She said: "The theme of this year's International Women's Day, `Gender Equality Beyond 2005: Building a More Secure Future', recognises that greater progress to protect the rights of women and ensure their full participation in decision-making is essential for peace, development and equality. A lot remains to be done." Today, only 15 countries have achieved the target of women occupying 30 per cent of the seats in parliament. The high levels of gender-based violence in conflict zones, the growth in trafficking of women and children, the high levels of maternal mortality, the rising rates of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection among women and girls, and the persistence of harmful traditional practices all point to the need for greater awareness and collective action.

Since traditions and practices are often stronger than law, greater efforts must be made to empower women, foster community participation, involve men and use culturally sensitive approaches. Says Thoraya Ahmed Obaid: "There is a need by world leaders to question and ignite debate on whether practices that discriminate against women and girls are contributing to the well-being of individuals, families and communities. There is a growing body of evidence which shows that providing equal access to education and health services, income-earning opportunities and legal rights benefits not only women, but also all members of society. It unleashes the full potential of half the human race to contribute to greater social and economic progress for all."

Of central importance are reproductive health and rights, as world leaders agreed in Cairo at the International Conference on Population and Development, and in Beijing, at the Fourth World Conference on Women. All individuals have the right to reproductive health; to determine freely and responsibly the number, timing and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to do so; and to make decisions concerning reproduction free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Several world leaders and policy-makers may immediately agree to this, but they are not willing to take any action. More distressing than their inaction was the fact that some countries, including India, had a tame official delegation, and, unlike most African countries, it was not even vocal. The Indian delegation was led by Kanti Singh, Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment. Significantly, there was a large contingent of Indian NGOs, but there was hardly any coordination among them. This was true of almost all the NGO delegations from different parts of the world.

And this is primarily because, according to CIMAC's (a Mexico City-based news service) Miriam Ruis Mendoza, who has been following women's issues since Beijing, NGOs seem to know very little about Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and hence have no clue about how they can link up the goals set at Beijing with MDGs, which were the focus of discussions in New York.

According to Nairobi-based Lucy Oriang, Managing Editor, Magazines, Daily Nation, who has been writing on women's issues for the past three decades, a lot of changes are happening at the grassroots level - women are organising themselves to get water, to fight against illicit liquor that is ruining their lives, to take on local male leaders, and so on - but nothing is happening at the top political level. The changes at the grassroots can never bring about changes in the lives of women in general. For that to happen, women need power and that depends solely on a strong political will.

Thus concluded another international meeting to "further women's equality and well-being", with a reaffirmation of the Beijing Platform for Action. What was clear from the conference, which ended with the passing of a set of `non-binding' resolutions that are to be "an important contribution to the U.N. Secretary-General's high-level Millennium Review in September", was that women are running just to remain in the same place.