Kofi Anan in his opening remarks to the 49th Commission on the Status of Women said that “Women have the right to live in dignity without want and fear.”

At the 49th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women Australia reaffirmed its strong commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action.

In her address to the plenary, Senator the Hon Kay Patterson, Minister for Women reported that Australia has made significant inroads across the Beijing Platform for Action’s 12 critical areas. Today, she said, our women have the same or better outcomes than men in several key areas, such as education and health and continue to make steady progress in other areas.

As Director of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace it was an honour to represent Australian women and work alongside the other members of the Australian delegation. Together we represented a broad Australian perspective and experience representing the interests of all Australian women including rural women, migrant women, Aboriginal women, young and old women.

The Australian delegation was amongst 165 member states with over 1800 Government delegates, including eighty Ministers. Participating on the fringe and also as part of some government delegations were over 2,600 non-government organisation representatives.

Australia expressed its hope at the last meeting that the 49th Session would provide an opportunity for participants to exchange views on lessons learned and share best practice which would assist countries in moving forward to improve the lives of women.

I went to New York with the expectation that the Commission on the Status of Women would focus on emerging issues, trends and new approaches to issues affecting the situation of women or equality between women and men. I was expecting to focus on the gaps and challenges.

What happened was primarily a review of the past and soft-focus on the present, a debate on abortion and the drafting of resolutions which while supported by the Australian delegation, fell well short of my expectation or indeed achieving real outcomes for women.

THE PAST AND SOFT FOCUS ON THE PRESENT

Perched on the edge of Manhattan Island, the towering United Nations building stands tall and strong, however the interior is old and outdated. The structure is a reminder of its former strength, but reform is much needed if States are going to be able to work together to enhance the security and prosperity of all.

In English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian and Swahili, to name just a few, Government’s had five minutes to present their achievements since Beijing. Five minutes doesn’t sound long, but it adds up and took considerable time to get through.

Progress in the areas of constitutional and legal revisions, reform of personal status laws and family codes, penal and employment codes and laws related to inheritance, nationality and land rights have been made. National plans of action and policies on gender equality and the advancement of women have been put in place. Improved access for girls and women to education at all levels, health services and finance has been achieved.

However for many women the reality of poverty, violence, high risk of disease and discrimination remains.

Common are the issues facing women across the globe – the feminisation of poverty; under-representation of women and girls in non-traditional fields of study; HIV/AIDS; cultural and social issues that hamper States’ efforts to combat violence against women; the trafficking of women and children; implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325; valuing women’s unpaid work; the gender wage gap; linking the Beijing process with other international processes for the advancement of women and accessing reliable and relevant sex-disaggregated data.

The needs of women in least developed countries remain unmet. Australia’s overseas aid program is guided by a Gender and Development Policy which reinforces many of the critical areas in the Beijing Platform for Action. Within Australia’s humanitarian and refugee program there is a category which seeks to protect vulnerable women for women the UNHCR deems resettlement is the only option.

Many including Kofi Anan and Hillary Clinton spoke of the seven strategic priorities to improve outcomes for women around the globe:

1. Strengthening girls access to education both primary & secondary
2. Guarantee sexual and reproductive health rights
3. Invest in infrastructure to reduce womens’ time burdens
4. Guarantee women’s wealth and inheritance rights
5. Eliminating gender inequality in employment
6. Increase women’s share in political and public office
7. Redouble efforts to combat violence against women and the girl child.

For some the challenges are greater than others.

Women do not have the vote in Kuwait , women are not permitted to drive in Saudi , in Pakistan if a women is raped she must have four adult male witnesses or else she may be charged with fornication and in India a husband is exempted from penal sanctions if he rapes his wife.


In contrast, last year Australia celebrated 100 years of the right for women to both vote and stand for election to the national parliament. Minister Patterson said that Government’s ongoing commitment to the Beijing declaration and Platform for Action will allow us to continue to consolidate and build upon our achievements before Beijing and since, so that women can realise their full potential in the dynamic environment of the twenty first century.

The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency is squarely focused on the strategic priority of eliminating gender inequality in the workplace. By working with business, through the reporting process, with our research and workshops, we are seeing improved opportunities for women.

ABORTION & THE DECLARATION
To mark the historic plan of action forged at Beijing ten years earlier, the Commission had agreed to adopt a declaration reaffirming the platform.

A draft was circulated prior to the session beginning and the United States put forward an amendment which they say was to address domestic concerns about misinterpretations of what Beijing does and what its authority is.

This proposal had the effect of ensuring most discussion for the reminder of the first week, on the floor of the plenary, at the side-events, in the cafeteria and in the corridors focused solely on the issue of abortion.

Minister Patterson had reaffirmed in the country statement, Australia’s strong commitment to the Beijing declaration and that meant as it stood.
United States Ambassador Ellen Sauerbrey explained, that in the ten years since agreeing to Beijing, the language “Reproductive health services” has become of concern to the United States because they believe it has been misinterpreted by many actors as giving some sort of a new universal global right to abortion.
The United States feels very firmly that different countries are in different places on this issue, and that this is not an issue that should be interpreted at the global level and imposed on countries. Ambassador Sauerbrey, went on to explain that this is a decision that should be made at the national level by countries who are making their decision based on their own needs and the concerns of their own citizens.
Following strong opposition and consultations with other states, the United States withdrew the amendment on the basis that it was understood that the Beijing or Beijing +5 outcome documents do not constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion. And similarly neither do the terms “reproductive health services” and “reproductive rights”.

The declaration was therefore approved by consensus, without any reservations.

The declaration reaffirmed the Beijing Plan of Action; welcomed the progress made thus far towards achieving gender equality, while recognising that challenges and obstacles remain and pledged to undertake further action to ensure the full and accelerated implementation of the Beijing documents.

The declaration also emphasized that the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is essential to achieving the internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration , and stress the need to ensure the integration of a gender perspective in the high-level plenary meeting on the review of the Millennium Declaration.

RESOLUTIONS

It had been hoped that the remainder of the time would have been devoted to the exchange of views on lessons learned and share best practice. Instead the work of the participants at the Commission then turned to the drafting of ten resolutions across a range of issues including:

1. the girl child and HIV/AIDS
2. Reducing demand for trafficking women and girls from all forms of exploitation
3. A Special Rapporteur on laws that discriminated against women
4. Mainstreaming a gender perspective into national policies and programmes
5. Integrating a gender perspective in post-disaster relief efforts, particularly in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster
6. The situation of an assistance to Palestinian women
7. Strengthening of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women
8. The economic advancement for women
9. The situation of women and girls in Afghanistan; and
10. Indigenous women

The resolutions underwent a lengthy and at times complex process of negotiation, which often continued after the lights had been turned out and the interpreters had gone home.

Most of the resolutions passed with consensus unamended from the negotiated agreed text on the final day, including the resolution on reducing the demand for trafficking which proved contentious early in negotiations. However the Resolutions on the special rapporteur and the economic advancement of women, while passed, did not pass with consensus.

The resolution on the special rapporteur was not supported by some including Australia (although Australia is not a voting member), because it represented the creation of another layer of reporting within the UN. This is opposite to Australia’s policy on reform of the United Nations which includes the streamlining of UN processes.

The trafficking resolution, sponsored by the United States, caused much debate as it was concerned with the demand for trafficked women and included prostitution in its definition. For those western countries, like Australia, with legalised prostitution in some jurisdictions, this proposition was in its original form impossible to support. The US initially opposed broadening the definition to include forced marriage or organ trade, however they agreed to accept the term “sexual exploitation” and this resolution passed calling on the need for the prevention, suppression and punishment of traffickers and incorporating the importance of addressing the root causes of the problem and protecting the rights of trafficked persons.

The economic advancement resolution proved to be the proposition with more intractable differences. Initially sponsored by the United States as a resolution on entrepreneurship for women, the United States withdrew its sponsorship in the final exciting minutes.

The developing world, and in particular command economies like Cuba, objected to much of the free-market rhetoric. The European Union, South Africa and New Zealand all believed it was important to assert that sexual and reproductive rights were vital for economic empowerment, thus returning the debate to the issue which had hijacked the first week of the conference. The text was amended accordingly.

Before withdrawing its sponsorship the United States had prevailed in its insistence that enabling conditions for economic empowerment such as enforceable contracts, the absence of corruption and sound macro-economic management be included in the resolution.

Australia participated actively in many of the drafting sessions, however did not co-sponsor any of them, despite seeing merit in some of the resolutions. This decision was explained in a closing statement made by Kerry Flanagan, Head of the Office for Women and acting leader of the Australian delegation, where she registered a concern that participants had been distracted from the important tasks we had come to the meeting to achieve. These comments were echoed by other states in closing statements.

NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANISATIONS

On the fringe of the Government negotiations was the lobbying being done by over 2,600 representatives of non-government organisations participating at the Commission. Many were highly organised, forming caucuses to share information and organise further.

Running parallel to the formal plenary sessions was a diverse program of events run by the NGO participants. Held in the Church Centre and around New York, sessions included HIV/AIDS, young women; The Tsunami and the Psychosocial needs of women; mainstreaming gender into landmine work; women, peace and the environment.

It is well recognised that civil society, particularly women’s groups and non-government organisations across the globe have played a significant role in the implementation of the Convention and the Platform for Action.

Joint efforts of Governments, non-government organisations and civil society are essential for progress towards gender equality.

The Australian NGO community was represented on the Australian Government delegation by Suzette Mitchell, Director of International Women’s Development Agency and Guelah Solomon from the National Jewish Women Association.

Throughout, the Government delegation met regularly with other Australian NGO representatives attending. This continued what had been a formal consultation process conducted by the Office for Women in the lead up to the Commission.

CONCLUSION

The Beijing Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Millennium Development Goals have guided the work of Governments and non-government organisations.

Unfortunately little discussion centred around the gaps and challenges for future work. Briefly discussed were possible future actions including expanded use of the gender mainstreaming strategy and close linkages between economic and social policies and programmes, gender sensitive fiscal and budgetary policies, greater participation of men and boys and social sector reforms.

There is much work to be done. However, in the words of Kofi Anan “the challenges facing women are not problems without solutions.”

Thankyou
 

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