Ten Years Later: What Progress since the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women?
Did the United States support the Declaration adopted by the Conference?
"United States Drops Anti-Abortion Demand at U.N. Equality Forum"
"New York Times, March 3, 2005, Author : Warren Hoge"
"UNITED NATIONS, March 2 - The United States on Wednesday dropped its contentious demand for a change in a centerpiece document of a United Nations conference on equality that had plunged the three-day-old gathering of 6,000 women and government ministers into conflict.
"The meeting this week of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women was held to review progress since its world conference on equality 10 years ago in Beijing. The document was a one-page statement that delegates had prepared to reaffirm the closing declaration of the 1995 meeting.
"But the United States proposed an amendment with wording saying it would agree to the principles in the declaration only after 'reaffirming that they do not create any new international human rights, and that they do not include the right to abortion.'
"Adrienne Germain, the president of the International Women's Health Coalition, who was also a member of the United States delegation in Beijing, called the American action a 'mischievous distraction' from the real business of the conference.
"She asserted that the Beijing statement was a nonbinding declaration, not a treaty, and that no part of it could be construed as creating new human rights or the right to abortion. 'What the U.S. amendment does is to make a statement about what Beijing does not say,' she said."
. . . .
Link to NYT article: http://religiousconsultation.org/News_Tracker/United_States_drops_anti-abortion_demand_at_UN.htm
What was in the Declaration that the US delegation wanted to change?
The Declaration adopted by the Commission on the Status of Women at its forty-ninth session as orally amended is available (as a pdf file) on the UN web site: www.un.org/womenwatch
When the Conference ended, how was its work described?
"Beijing at ten: achieving gender equality, development and peace"
"Governments pledge to accelerate efforts to achieve equality for women and fulfil Beijing commitments, as UN commission concludes"
Find the official press release at: www.un.org/womenwatch
How did others react to the US Delegations tactics?
"SUBJECT TO DEBATE by Katha Pollitt"
"The Cheese Stands Alone""The Nation, March 3, 2005"
. . . .
"Most likely nothing will come of this attempt to wreck long-settled consensus, unless you count the wasting of thousands of precious delegate hours that could have been spent talking about girls' education, maternal mortality, HIV and getting more women into government. The United States will have its reservations noted, the document will be approved by almost everyone else in the world and Bush will have once again made our country look ridiculous in order to prove his devotion to his right-wing Christian base. Let's hope that's the worst of it, but why oh why does it have to be this way every single time? With our wealth and our fabulous medical and scientific resources, to say nothing of the Bush Administration's oft-stated commitment to women, we should be attending to every need of the global women's rights activists gathered here--people like Nigeria's Bene Madunagu, head of the Girls' Power Initiative, which fosters sex education at the grassroots level and fights child marriage, and Argentina's Mabel Bianco, whose NGO, FEIM, educates girls and women about HIV. . . ."
See the whole column at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050321/pollitt
Where can I find more information?
See a report from the UN Research Institute for Social Development. This report contains tables, graphs and commentary including, on page 17:
". . . .The last few years have seen the [United States] join, even at times replace, the Vatican in global negotiations as the key strategist against the women's agenda on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Under the 2000-2004 administration, the United States slashed aid budgets supporting contraception, and promoted abstinence and greater parental control over adolescents as the way to contain sexual freedom and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. . . ."
Find it at: http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BB128/(httpHomepages)/$first?OpenDocument
When and where were the previous conferences?
- 1975 First World Conference on Women, Mexico City
- 1980 Second World Conference on Women, Copenhagen
- 1985 Third World Conference on Women, Nairobi
- 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing
Ten Years Later: What Progress since the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women?
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