Related Events
43rd session of the Commission on Social Development, 9-18 February 2005, New York, on "Review of further implementation of the World Summit for Social Development and the outcome of the 24th special session of the General Assembly."
Feminist Dialogues, 23-24 January 2005, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
World Social Forum, 26-31 January 2005, Porto Alegre, Brazil. The WSF proposes to debate alternative means to building a globalization in solidarity, which respects universal human rights and those of all men and women of all nations and the environment, and is grounded in democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.
Financing for Development Office Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on "Sovereign debt for sustained development: issues for countries that access financial markets," 7-8 March 2005, New York.
"Celebrating Beijing+10," the Fifth South Asia Regional Ministerial Conference, co-hosted by the Government of Pakistan and UNIFEM, will take place in May 2004 in Islamabad. For more information, contact firoza.mehrotra@undp.org |
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Beijing+10 and the Commission on the Status of Women
Beijing+10, the ten-year review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome of Beijing+5, will assess achievements, gaps, and challenges in implementation, and identify forward-looking strategies for women's empowerment.
Beijing+10 will take place at the 49th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) from 28 February to 11 March 2005 at UN Headquarters in New York. The Chairperson of the CSW will transmit the outcome of the review and appraisal to the five-year review of the implementation of the outcomes of the Millennium Summit, which will take place in September 2005 in New York.
The UN Division for the Advancement of Women's (DAW) website has information on the themes for discussion and a schedule of high-level events. Information on NGO participation and links to various online discussions are also available. NGOs can now print out Confirmation Letters for registered participants online — see attached News Flash for more information.
International Women's Day, celebrated internationally on 8 March every year, will focus this year on the theme "Gender Equality 2005: Building a More Secure Future," with particular emphasis on issues around development, human rights, security and disasters.
An Expert Group Meeting on "Achievements, gaps and challenges in linking the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Declaration and Millennium Development Goals" will be held 7-10 February 2005 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The meeting's findings and conclusions will provide inputs for an interactive panel on the same issue during the CSW, on 2 March 2005.
The Centre for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL), Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era (DAWN), and the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) have joined together to initiate a global campaign to celebrate Beijing+10 and link local, national, regional and international NGO actions. The Global Week of Action – Beijing and Beyond will be a decentralized week of activities taking place around the world from 1 to 8 March 2005, with NGOs and networks planning actions according to their own priorities and interests, based on both implementing and going beyond the Beijing Platform for Action. As of mid-December 2004, more than 60 networks from many movements and regions have agreed to cosponsor the initiative. Individual organizations are invited to endorse and become involved in the campaign — please send an email to endorse@beijingandbeyond.org as soon as possible with full contact details. Look out for a soon-to-be-launched website giving information and a calendar of events: www.beijingandbeyond.org.
The NGO Committee on the Status of Women will host an orientation on 27 February 2005 at Barnard College in New York. The Chair of the CSW and the Assistant Secretary-General on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women are speakers. The orientation will also include panels reflecting on progress and challenges, reporting on regional experiences, and identifying emerging issues and future strategies for gender equality.
» return to top Regional Meetings in Preparation for Beijing+10
By the end of December 2004, all five UN regional commissions had concluded meetings to assess the status of women, the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, and the key challenges for gender equality and empowerment in their regions. Civil society in all regions also mobilized to organize NGO forums in conjunction with those meetings, to present their own assessments of progress and challenges. Links to the reports or websites are listed below.
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA)
Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
African NGO Forum
A decade ago, African women peace movements from across the continent gathered in a Women's Peace Tent in Dakar, organized by the NGO Forum of the Fifth African Regional Conference on Women to prepare for the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. African women shared their experiences of poverty, conflict, internal displacement and violence, and strategized to ensure that women were involved in peace-building processes. They made significant contributions to highlighting the 12 critical areas of concern contained in the Beijing Platform for Action. The Peace Tent also led to the creation of the Federation of African Women's Peace Network (FERFAP), which links women's peace movements throughout Africa.
Ten years later, African women gathered again at a Women's Peace Tent in Addis Ababa in October 2004 to review the Beijing Platform, highlight the achievements of women in the past decade to promote peace and security in their countries, and determine strategic and concerted ways to meet continuing serious challenges facing women from conflict-affected areas. The Peace Tent was organized by the NGO Forum of the Seventh African Regional Conference on Women, which will input its recommendations to the Beijing+10 review process to be conducted by the UN in March 2005.
Participants to the NGO Forum noted the many successes achieved by women over the last decade, acknowledging the crucial role of NGOs in moving the Beijing Platform forward, often despite serious financial and human resource constraints. Political participation and education were recognized as areas where most progress had occurred in all five African sub-regions. Serious challenges requiring urgent attention remain, however, including violation of women's rights in the context of customary and religious laws, the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly among women and girls, and deepening poverty for millions of women. Data shows that poverty has actually increased among African women over the last ten years. Participants also pointed to the failure of African women's movements to make links between commitments from international processes such as the Beijing Platform, to national development planning processes, including the Millennium Development Goals and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.
A moving and symbolic moment at the event was the lighting once again of the African Women Peace Torch. Since 1995, when it was presented at the Beijing conference, the Torch has travelled across the continent, becoming a symbol of women's quest for peace, freedom and development. Women from the Great Lakes Region brought the Torch to the conference, where it was lit at the opening ceremony. It was handed to women from the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the end of the conference, to resume its journey from one conflict area to another, to spread its message that "Without Peace, There is No Development."
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)
The Himalayan Declaration on Beijing+10
The South Asia Beijing+10 NGO Consultation held in Kathmandu in June 2004 drew more than 160 delegates from civil society organizations from Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Participants concluded the meeting with the Himalayan Declaration, calling on governments of the region to fulfil commitments made at the Beijing Conference and the international community to prioritize the concerns of South Asian women in their agenda. Some of the chief concerns highlighted were the continued scale of rampant gender-based violence, crimes of trafficking, sexual exploitation and slavery of women, and the negative effects of globalization on women. Read the full Declaration
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
Key Issues at the UNECE Regional Meeting
The December 2004 UNECE meeting focused on three areas of concern covered in the Beijing Platform, all of particular significance for women in the ECE region: (a) women and the economy (employability, gender budgets, social protection); (b) institutional mechanisms to promote gender equality; and (c) trafficking in the context of migratory movements. The NGO Forum was held before the intergovernmental meeting to feed inputs and recommendations on these themes into the meeting.
NGOs also raised some "emerging issues" in their deliberations, issues that either were not adequately covered in the Beijing Platform and/or that had intensified over the last decade. The overarching concern appeared to be the way in which global forces, particularly the rise of militarism and fundamentalisms of all kinds and the growing inequities produced by globalization, had intensified since the Beijing Conference in 1995, often eroding support for and attention to women's human rights.
We reject all excuses for violations of women's human rights whether justified in the name of 'national security' or 'cultural heritage' or religion. The global 'war on terrorism' should not be used as an excuse to undermine any group's human rights or to neglect the critical issues of women's daily human insecurity. We see multilateralism as the way to address global security concerns. Politics of greed, exclusion, domination and military power have failed women in the UNECE region. (Extract from the final report of the NGO Forum)
At the closing session of the intergovernmental meeting, the Chairperson concluded that the member states of the UNECE reaffirmed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome document of the 23rd Special Session of the UN General Assembly (Beijing+5). The United States indicated that it was joining consensus on the Chairperson's Conclusions, giving an "explanation of position" that stated that "joining consensus in no way constitutes a reaffirmation of language in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the outcome of the 23rd Special Session of the General Assembly, or documents referenced therein that could be used to suggest the creation of new human rights."
The Chairperson's Conclusions stressed "the importance of strong, sustained political will and commitment at the national, regional and international levels for achieving their full and accelerated implementation as well as the need to undertake further action to this effect, inter alia through the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, mainstreaming gender perspectives into all policies and programmes and promoting the full and equal participation and empowerment of women and enhanced international cooperation."
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New UNIFEM Publication on Linking Beijing, CEDAW and the MDGs
 A new UNIFEM publication — "Pathway to Gender Equality: CEDAW, Beijing and the MDGs" — examines the gender equality dimensions of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through the lens of two important global processes: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference of Women.
The publication draws on the wealth of information and experience on gender equality issues that CEDAW and Beijing already provide, suggesting that this be used to complement the MDG agenda. It identifies specific ways in which the three frameworks correspond to and support each other, and suggests resources and entry points for engaging in the process.
To read more, see the Press Release. The complete publication is also available online.
» return to top Consultation With Women's Rights Groups
UNIFEM, the Millennium Campaign, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation organized a three-day consultation in New York in December 2004 with 25 representatives of women's organizations from around the world. The main objective was to brainstorm on key opportunities and challenges for the gender equality agenda in 2005, given that two important events — the ten-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action and the five-year review of progress in implementing the Millennium Declaration — were taking place in March and September 2005, respectively. Other key events in 2005, such as the World Social Forum, the WTO Ministerial Meeting, and the G8 Summit, were also put forward as additional important entry points and platforms to highlight key issues facing women.
Participants expressed concerns about the inadequacies of the MDG targets and indicators relating to gender, the limited participation by women in national and global MDG processes, and the exclusion of reproductive rights and employment issues. On the whole, there was a strong sense that revitalizing the women's movement was a top priority in 2005. Noting the limitations of the MDG targets and indicators, participants focused on how the women's movement could use the opportunities of 2005 to advance their agenda — demanding accountability from governments and international financial institutions, and giving greater visibility and voice to their issues. A task force was formed to engage with the Global Call to Action Against Poverty on how it could better integrate women's networks and organizations into the process.
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Related Information on the Millennium Summit Review
In December 2004, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution on the modalities, format and organization of the High-level Plenary Meeting to review the implementation of the Millennium Declaration. The meeting is scheduled for 14-16 September 2005 in New York. The resolution also determined that the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development would be held on 27-28 June 2005 in New York and that ECOSOC would stay in New York in 2005. Interactive hearings with civil society are currently scheduled for June 2005.
The High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change issued its report in December 2004 giving concrete recommendations to improve collective security; these recommendations included addressing issues of poverty and HIV/AIDS.
The report of the Millennium Project, "Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals," was launched in January 2004.
The reports of the High-Level Panel and the Millennium Project, together with recommendations from UN agencies, will be key inputs to the comprehensive Report of the Secretary-General on progress made in the fulfilment of the commitments contained in the Millennium Declaration, including the internationally agreed development goals (the MDGs), the global partnership required for their achievement, and progress made in the implementation of the outcomes and commitments of the major conferences and summits in the economic, social and related fields. The Secretary-General's report will be issued in March 2005.
The Millennium Campaign has launched a new website.
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