INTRODUCTION: THE BEIJING PLATFORM
AND WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS
The
Fourth World Conference on Women was a major human rights
accomplishment for women. It marked the convergence of political and
legal processes to underscore, on a global scale, the centrality
of human rights to the struggle for equality.
The Conference Declaration and Platform for Action
is built on a rights framework, invoking the substance and
the language of human rights in every section, and referring
specifically to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women as well as to the other human
rights treaties.
The
Platform for Action must be brought into the new millennium
as a reaffirmation of the global commitment to women’s human
rights made at Beijing in 1995.
The Beijing + 5 review provides an opportunity to recommit
to implementation of the Platform with specific reference
to women’s human rights as stated in the CEDAW Convention
and the other international human rights treaties.
Conversely, the CEDAW Convention provides a clear framework
for pursuing and monitoring implementation of the Platform
for Action for years to come.
World
conferences such as Beijing—and Teheran (human rights) in
1968, Nairobi (women) in 1985, Rio de Janeiro (environment)
in 1992, Vienna (human rights) in 1993, Cairo (population)
in 1994—are political events that mark global recognition
of major issues and an attempt to find consensus among governments
about approaches to those issues.
The preparations and the conferences themselves are
a major political process, engaging governments in discussion
with their constituencies and with other governments to forge
agreements on priorities and commitments.
Human rights enforcement is a more legally oriented
process, based on documents and obligations that have the
force of law. The Beijing Conference brought the two processes together, engaging
citizens and governments in a dialogue that was political
in nature but informed by the legal precepts of the human
rights enterprise. Platform implementation, therefore, should
be informed by human rights principles, and assessment of
human rights implementation should be made with reference
to the commitments made in the Platform.
World
Conferences: encapsulating
the political climate
World
conferences are organized to deal with issues “whose time
has come.” The determination
to hold a world conference arises out of discussions within
the United Nations among member states.
While world conferences are mounted through the infrastructure
of the United Nations for the member states, the international
donor community and, particularly in recent years, the international
NGO community have played a considerable role.
World
conferences take place in a political context.
They involve all the nations of the world, focus on
globally important subjects such as human rights, environment,
and social development, and generate enormous interest from
civil society as well. As
the goal is to arrive at a consensus on issues, proposals
to address them, and, in some cases, commitments, the process
is a classic political exercise in negotiating ideas and language
that most of the participating states can accept if not wholeheartedly
endorse. As the product
of a political process, the final conference document is a
political one, carrying the weight of a consensus achieved
as a result of the events and processes leading up to it.
It is essentially an advisory statement, indicating
policies that governments should adopt to achieve the goals
stated by the conference.
The
world conference process has its limitations.
The final conference documents do not carry legal obligations,
and the promises are not binding.
A change in government or economic climate may result
in a loss of commitment.
Conference documents rarely include mechanisms for
measuring or monitoring implementation.
Assessments at international levels are not carried
out on a country-by-country basis, allowing governments to
report without fear of close examination. The review process is cumbersome, and assessments
frequently result in generalities that are difficult to apply
on a real-time country level. Implementation and monitoring
therefore require advocacy and watchfulness on policy development
and execution, from both inside and outside government.
But
world conferences should not be dismissed as “merely political.”
They are important in that they provide a forum for
extensive discussion of critical issues at national, regional
and global levels. Because very few nations refuse to participate,
and even states that are not members of the UN want to be
included, these conferences
provide an opportunity to air issues on the widest possible
stage. Moreover, in the nineties, the conferences
and their preparatory processes have developed as an opportunity
for the NGO community to define issues and advocate cutting-edge
positions that expand the boundaries of discussion.
As
a direct result of expanded discussion and NGO input, the
world conferences held in the 1990s have culminated in a new
level of attention specifically to the human rights of women.
Reference to human rights opens the process to a new
level of assessment, monitoring and advocacy. If world conference commitments are matched
with human rights obligations, review of implementation becomes
a more specific, demanding, and useful exercise.
Referencing
human rights obligations:
long-term commitments
Human
rights obligations, as articulated in the international human
rights treaties, are undertaken by States parties with a clear
understanding that they are legal obligations. While the undertaking may be the product of
a particular political moment, the obligation continues indefinitely,
regardless of changes in ruling party or even forms of government. A treaty ratification is a government commitment
for the long term, with obligations to continuously self-monitor,
make changes in legislation and policy, and report periodically
to a body that will examine performance with specificity.
With respect to certain treaties, ratification of an
Optional Protocol also subjects the government to scrutiny
of performance relating to specific individuals and events.
The
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women, was adopted in 1979 as the culmination of more
than a generation of efforts to articulate the human rights
of women. As noted
below, the Convention includes rights recognized in earlier
treaties applying specifically to women and incorporates as
well the rights stated in the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights.
These two basic human rights treaties include provisions
stating the international obligation of nondiscrimination
(Article 2 of each) and prohibiting discrimination on the
basis of sex (Article 3 of each), but they do not reference
with specificity the obstacles to women’s enjoyment of human
rights. The CEDAW Convention states specific obstacles
and requirements for implementation—and as such is a guide
for eliminating discrimination across the board.
The
heart of the Beijing Platform for Action also is elimination
of discrimination on the basis of sex. Accordingly, the CEDAW Convention, which defines
discrimination against women, is extraordinarily useful as
a guide for policy development to implement the Platform.
Assessing
implementation: monitoring
processes converge
While
the Platform for Action does not include specific monitoring
mechanisms, the political context of world conferences and
specifically of the Beijing process produced a form of accountability
that should not be discounted.
As a result of their intense involvement in the Beijing
preparatory process, NGOs all over the world developed expertise
in issue identification, advocacy skills, and the confidence
to apply these skills in dealing directly with their governments.
Governments are now inescapably aware of women’s constituencies. Women no longer accept excuses for inaction. And they vote.
At
the same time, NGOs have recently developed expertise in using
the CEDAW Convention and other processes to raise their governments’
level of accountability for treaty implementation.
Thanks to efforts by international NGOs and certain
treaty body experts and UN staff, the treaty implementation
and review process, which for many years was very low profile,
government oriented, and a bit of a mystery to NGOs, has become
another avenue of advocacy that can have concrete results.
Accountability
is the essence of monitoring both the Platform for Action
and the CEDAW Convention. The Beijing + 5 review provides a unique opportunity to demand government accountability
for the promises made to women in every context.
Neither
the Platform for Action nor the CEDAW Convention include clear
indicators by which performance of obligations can be assessed
in all areas. Treaty
experts, government officials, UN specialized agencies and
Secretariat, and NGOs all have useful skills and information
that can be marshaled to develop indicators that would be
invaluable as to both Platform and CEDAW Convention monitoring.
Indicators and benchmarks would provide a guide to
sex-disaggregated data collection and make accountability
more readily measurable.
This would simplify
collaboration by all parties to define and meet implementation
goals.
WORLD CONFERENCES AND WOMEN:
TOWARDS THE RIGHTS FRAMEWORK
The
adoption of the 1967 Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women was an early milestone in the process of understanding
women’s rights as human rights. Drafted by the UN Commission on the Status
of Women (CSW), the Declaration was the response to a generally
perceived need to consolidate in one document all the international
standards concerning women’s rights developed in the UN since
1945. These rights
were articulated in individual treaties addressing trafficking
and prostitution (1949), political rights (1952), nationality
of married women (1962), marriage (1962), equal remuneration
for work of equal value (1951), discrimination in employment
(1958), discrimination in education (1958), and racial discrimination
(1965).
With
the Declaration having laid the foundation, the 1968 International
Conference on Human Rights (Teheran) adopted a resolution
on promoting women’s rights in the modern world and a long-term
UN program for advancement of women that became a blueprint
for global action.
The
first global women’s conference organized by the United Nations
was held in Mexico City in 1975.
The Conference called for a UN Decade for Women and
proposed drafting of a convention on women’s human rights.
The Mexico City conference also marked the first time
that a major NGO gathering was held in parallel with the official
conference. The two
later Decade conferences, Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985),
addressed the rights issues in different ways and are distinguished
primarily as providing opportunities to establish a global
agenda for equality.
In
December 1979, in an action central to the accomplishments
of the Decade for Women, the General Assembly adopted the
first comprehensive international treaty on women’s human
rights. The Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW Convention), based on the 1967 Declaration, further
consolidated the articulation of women’s human rights stated
in other treaties, including some ILO conventions.
The product of negotiation within a CSW that by that
time had a majority of members from the global South, the
CEDAW Convention addressed both civil and political rights
and economic, social and cultural rights. With the inclusion of articles specifically addressing the issues
of discriminatory custom and tradition and
the rights of rural women, the Convention clearly reflected
the concerns of women in the developing world.
The
United Nations Decade for Women saw parallel rights-based
and political activities in the drafting and adoption of the
CEDAW Convention and the far-ranging discussions held at the World Conferences on Women. Ten years later, these processes converged
at the Fourth World Conference. At Beijing, 189 governments
adopted a human rights approach to equality and women’s empowerment
that aligned with the development issues addressed at the
Decade conferences.
From
Mexico City to Beijing: evolving
a human rights approach to gender equality
At
the first global women’s conference, held in Mexico
City in 1975, women’s rights were considered mainly in
the context of reviewing national legislation to test its
conformity to relevant international instruments, and enforcement
of that legislation. The
idea of a binding international instrument specifically addressing
women’s human rights was discussed, but only as a recommendation.
The main topics covered at the Conference included
Proposed
follow-up activities centered on studies and collection of
information to document the situation of women to men and
steps governments could take to improve social services to
place women on a par with men.
In
setting the agenda for the second global women’s conference,
held in Copenhagen
in 1980, the General
Assembly focused on the themes of employment, health and education. The agenda did not even address women’s rights
in a broad context as had the Mexico City conference. This was a reaction to the difficulties that
were being encountered at that time in the CSW to reach agreement
on a comprehensive women’s human rights convention.
The choice of agenda items also was a reflection of
the prevailing global emphasis on development and on the achievement
of the goals of the United Nations Development Decades.
In the end, the Copenhagen Programme for Action focused
on promoting a significant role for women in the development
process through education, health care, access to the labor
force, and support for their role in agriculture. The Conference skimmed over the question of
women’s human rights.
The
third world conference on women was held in
Nairobi at the end of the Decade for Women in 1985.
The final document, the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies
to the Year 2000, attributed most forms of inequality, particularly
in the developing world, to “mass poverty and the general
backwardness” of the majority of the world’s women, rather
than to government failure to recognize universal principles
and standards of justice. It identified “gender” differences—socially
determined factors that lead to discrimination between women
and men—as obstacles to equality.
Recommendations
proposed in the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies were organized
according to the themes of equality, development and peace.
Recommendations under the theme of equality, the most relevant to women’s human rights, focused primarily on
de facto rights and on women’s participation
in decisionmaking, the question of multiple legal systems
(customary and statutory), underuse of women’s talents because
of discrimination, discrimination against women in rural areas,
and discrimination in ownership of land and access to credit.
Recommendations under the theme of development
focused primarily on integration of women into socioeconomic
development. Strategies proposed under the rubric of peace dealt primarily with women in situations
of armed conflict but, notably, included for the first time
attention to violence against women.
Women’s
rights were officially recognized as human rights for the
first time on a global stage, at the World Conference on Human
Rights held in Vienna in 1993. This recognition was largely a result of lobbying by the women’s
NGO community. Moreover,
women’s human rights were understood, consistent with the
CEDAW Convention, to be universal and indivisible and to include
economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and
political rights. The
accomplishment of Vienna—the inclusion of women as full actors
in the human rights enterprise—paved the way for the full
integration of human rights into the women’s development enterprise
at Beijing.
Beijing: centering on rights
Beijing
was the first global conference in which women in development
issues were closely and explicitly linked to women’s human
rights. The Platform
for Action also is the first global political agreement in
which the CEDAW Convention is clearly reflected.
The
Beijing Platform for Action mentions “rights” approximately
500 times and includes human rights as one of the twelve Critical
Areas of Concern. Signatories
called for restraint from violating women’s human rights and
placed new emphasis on vigorous “promotion” and “protection”
of rights. The Platform for Action “upholds” the CEDAW
Convention (para 7) and notes that since 1985 there had been
many “violations of and failure to protect all human rights
and fundamental freedoms of all women, and their civil, cultural,
economic, political and social rights including the right
to development” (para 42). The Platform calls for protection of a wide range of rights, including:
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BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION
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CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN
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K. Environment |
Article
7 & 8 Participation in public life and decisionmaking
that affects women’s lives
Article
14 Rural women’s participation in development
planning
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L Girl Child |
All
articles except those that implicitly apply only to
adults
Article
16.1 (d, f) Best interest of the child shall be paramount
in making family decisions; equal decisionmaking as
to number and spacing of children
Article
16.3 No child betrothal; minimum age for marriage
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|
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From
a rights perspective, the
Platform for Action moves beyond the CEDAW treaty in
some areas and adds breadth to others. For example, it includes an entire section
on violence against women, which is not mentioned in the CEDAW
Convention because in the 1970’s when the Convention was drafted,
the issue had not yet received international attention and
very little hard data and evidence had yet been collected.
The Platform section on armed conflict reflects a new
level of attention to and public discussion of the searing
experiences of women caught in war zones. The effect of media on women’s lives and women’s roles as portrayed
in the media, the relationship between women and the environment,
and the special roles and needs of girl children have only
recently been documented as status of women issues.
At
the same time, not all of these newly recognized issues are
addressed from a rights perspective; the language of rights
in the Platform is not invoked to the same degree as to each
Critical Area of Concern.
But the Platform and the Convention are complementary.
If invoked together, the two instruments along with
other international agreements and treaties constitute a global
basis for advocating gender equality.
Women
and Poverty
This
Critical Area contains the least direct references to rights.
It focuses primarily on women and development, but
it does mention rights of women migrants (para 58k) and indigenous
peoples (para 61c). Notably it calls for protection of women’s
right to full and equal access to economic resources, including
the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other
property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technology
(para. 60f). The Convention, negotiated twenty years earlier,
did not directly address the question of poverty, but did
single out rural women in Article 14.
Subsequent interpretation of CEDAW has encompassed
the problems of poor women and their need to access economic
resources and social services without discrimination to overcome
conditions of poverty.
Education
and Training
The
Platform calls for education as a human right (para 69).
Within this framework it calls for ensuring the rights
of women and girls to freedom of conscience and religion(para
80f), for ratification of the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (80j), and for human rights education
programs for women. It
refers to the right of indigenous women and girls to education;
calls for an international campaign promoting the right of
women and girls to education (87c); to rights of migrant women
(148b) and to the right to self-determination (149a). The CEDAW Convention addresses non-discrimination
in education and the need for women and girls to have the
same opportunities as men and boys to all types of education.
Women
and Health
The
Platform states at the outset that “women have the right to
the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical
and mental health” (para 89). Their enjoyment of this right
must be secured throughout the life cycle (para 92). This
Critical Area refers to rights in over two-thirds of the paragraphs
and sub-paragraphs. The section is built on the agreements
reached at the International Conference on Population and
Development (Cairo, 1994) and in some instances has expanded
on the ICPD Plan of Action.
Despite the controversy surrounding women’s health,
the 1990s brought considerable evolution in the international
agreements in this important area. The CEDAW Convention addresses
health issues primarily in Article 12;
in 1998 the Committee adopted a General Recommendation
on women and health taking the Platform into account and building
on scholarship in this area as well as efforts made by NGOs
to examine this issue in a rights framework.
Violence
Against Women
The
Platform states clearly that violence against women violates
and impairs or nullifies women’s enjoyment of their human
rights (para 112). Building
on gains made at the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna,
1993) , this section mentions rights 13 times, including references
to the UN Commission on Human Rights, which is invited to
renew the appointment of the Special Rapporteur on Violence
against Women. The CEDAW Convention notably is silent on this
question, but in 1991 the Committee adopted General Recommendation
No. 19, indicating the manner in which each article of the
Convention should be invoked to deal with the issue.
Women
and Armed Conflict
In
this section, the Platform states boldly that “violations
of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict
are violations of the fundamental principles of international
human rights and humanitarian law” (para 131).
It repeatedly refers to international humanitarian
law and human rights instruments and calls for non-discrimination
in their application. In particular,
the Platform singles out acts of violence against women, such
as rape, in particular systematic rape, forced prostitution
and other forms of indecent assault and sexual slavery, during
armed and other conflicts (145e).
It also addresses the rights of refugee and displaced
women. Article 8 of
the Convention is not so bold, addressing only the right to
participate in international fora and organizations.
The Platform expands the discussion, by linking women’s
rights issues to international humanitarian law and other
treaties.
Women
and the Economy
The
Platform makes the link between financial, monetary and commercial
and other economic systems and women’s access to economic
resources. It identifies
obstacles to women’s employment, appropriate working conditions
and control over economic resources.
It advocates that workers’ rights apply equally to
men and women. Many
of its provisions can also be found in Article 11 of the CEDAW
Convention. Workers’
rights had been under discussion for years, particularly at
the ILO, and had evolved considerably with respect to women
by the time the CEDAW Convention was adopted.
Women
in Power and Decision-making
Here
the focus of the Platform is fundamentally grounded in the
Convention, but includes more detail on the types of actions,
including training, required to move more women into decision-making
positions.
