LOOKING BACK

Five-year reviews of UN global policies are intended, among other things, to assess the level of government commitment to implementation. The 1995 review of the 1985 UN Forward Looking Strategies to the Year 2000, found the momentum of implementation so slow as to put the entire policy at risk. What will the outcome of the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA) find?

For those involved in the "Beijing process", whether at home or in Beijing, there was a strong determination to see that the PFA would not be forgotten. In the past five years, the PFA has become the subject of countless conferences, the basis for educational curriculum development, and is at the core of several monitoring initiatives at local, national, regional and international levels.

Among these initiatives has been the annual publication of country profiles by the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). These illustrate actions taken in different countries to implement the PFA, thus providing an invaluable service to the government and NGO community alike. Several of these reports are still available from WEDO, and offer useful insights into progress made these last five years.

MOVING FORWARD

Now, in the Year 2000, what needs to be put in place to accelerate implementation of the PFA? One idea currently being discussed is the establishment of targets or benchmarks. Characteristics of useful targets were put forward recently by Patricia Flor, Chairperson of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. She described the following six functions of effective targets.

Targets should:

• make progress visible and measurable;

• allow monitoring of trends to see if progress is being made;

• translate idealistic, goals into realistic stages or efforts;

• help determine responsibility for achieving targets;

• allow progress to be rewarded by general recognition.

Additionally, targets should be:

• based on measurable, available data and statistics;

• supported by the regular publication of trends and changes vis-à-vis the targets and benchmarks;

• complemented with a monitoring mechanism;

• developed so as to impart a sense of ownership to all of the major players who are accountable for, and will benefit from, the results.

The PFA actually contains several benchmarks although scant attention seems to have been given to them during these past five years. If benchmarks are useful, why have the benchmarks that presently exist been ignored? What can be done to make benchmarks as useful and accessible as possible so that they become real tools for accountability? A forthcoming UNIFEM publication: Progress of the World's Women, includes a chapter on this issue, entitled: "Benchmarks for Progress: International Norms, Objectives and Targets." This publication will be available in June 2000, and available from Women, Ink.

KEEPING SCORE

During the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women, a number of NGOs banded together to create large banner-like scoreboards which served to give public visibility to responses by country to the proposals put forward in the PFA. The success of these scoreboards prompted IWTC to work with Interaction, the US-based umbrella organization for development NGOs, in producing a post-Beijing Scoreboard. This later appeared in IWTC's Postview #6 in 1996.

Scoreboards are particularly useful in providing "at a glance" information, and in conveying a more immediate and ongoing sense of the monitoring process. The concept of "scoring", be it on a scoreboard, a scorecard or a report card, is readily grasped by most people and is thus more easily "owned".

IWTC's most recent version of the scoreboard is The Beijing Plus Five Scoreboards. They ar intended to encourage and engage women at community level in looking at where we stand now as against where we stood in 1995. They are based on different sets of indicators, including those indicating political will, and those taken from UNDP's 1995 and 1999 Human Development Reports.

THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT

One tool for measuring progress is UNDP's annual Human Development Report. Comparing data from the 1995 Report with that presented in the 1999 Report is revealing. In IWTC's Beijing Plus Five Scoreboards, three composite indicators from 1995 and 1999 are presented for comparison: the Human Development Index (HDI), the Gender and Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Index (GEM). For many, the task of reading charts and statistical data is usually a chore left to researchers and academics who must use this kind of information as part of their ongoing work. Yet increasingly, many activists are turning to this form of information as a useful tool for arguing their cause and strengthening their position in shaping public policy.

The UNDP Human Development Report (HDR) uses a composite index known as the Human Development Index (HDI) to measure average achievements in basic human development. The HDI has a numerical value, and the report ranks all countries based on this number. The lower the number, the better the ranking, with Number 1 being the best rank. Using these rankings, it is possible to see where your country stands in comparison with all other countries.

The three key indicators used in formulating the HDI are:

• Life expectancy
• Educational attainment, and
• Decent standard of living as measured by income.

As one way of supporting the preparatory process for 1995 Beijing World Conference, the 1995 Human Development Report focused on gender issues and introduced, for the first time, two gender indices. These are:

• The Gender-Related Development Index (GDI), and
• The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM).

The GDI uses the same three indicators as the HDI- life expectancy, educational attainment, and decent standard of living measured by income-, taking into account the differences between men and women. In 1999, data to calculate the GDI was available for 143 countries.

Tips For Reading the Charts

The Beijing Plus Five Scorecards indicate:

• Whether or not your country has developed a National Plan of Action for the Advancement of Women

• Whether or not your country has ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

• Each country's ranking on the Human Development Index (HDI), taken from the UNDP Human Development Reports of 1995 and 1999

• Each country's ranking on the Gender-Related Development Index (GDI), taken from the UNDP Human Development Reports of 1995 and 1999

• Each country's ranking on the Gender Empower-ment Measure (GEM), taken from the UNDP Human Development Reports of 1995 and 1999

• Whether any country still has laws in force that discriminate against women.

In looking at these charts, you will notice many things immediately. For instance, you will sometimes notice big differences between the HDI and the GDI rankings in specific countries, indicating considerable gender inequalities between the development of the general population and women's development.

If the GDI rank is lower than the HDI rank, it reveals unequal progress between women and men--in other words, men are enjoying the benefits of development at a rate greater than women. If the GDI rank is higher than the HDI rank, women are enjoying the benefits of development equally or at a rate greater than men!

In trying to get at the root of some of these inequalities, the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) was developed to look at aspects of economic and political participation and decision-making for women. The GEM includes statistics on:

• seats in parliament held by women;
• female administrators and managers;
• female professional and technical workers; and
• women's real GDP per capita.

These indicators could be important tools for future Beijing +5 benchmarking activities, and we encourage people to look at the full 1999 Human Development Report for more information of this kind. The HDR is available at most UNDP offices or it can be ordered from Women, Ink.

INDICATORS OF POLITICAL WILL

The Beijing Plus Five scoreboards present information that give good indications of your country's political will in terms of implementation of the PFA. For instance, does your country have a National Plan of Action? Has your country ratified the Optional protocol to CEDAW? Do you still have unfair and discriminatory laws in force in your country? Each of these questions bring up important issues around which women everywhere are campaigning. In July,1999, Equality Now, an international human rights organization, issued a newsletter entitled: Women's Action, highlighting a cross-section of laws currently in force in 45 countries which explicitly discriminate against women. Equality Now calls on governments to repeal or amend these laws before the Beijing +5 Special Session as a demonstration of commitment to implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action

Changes are happening. In Peru, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Japan, Jordan and Switzerland, legislative reviews have been reported. However, much remains to be done.

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