• 25 Years of Journeying - from Mexio to Beijing +5
• Announcements:
• Editorial: NGOs walking the line for the PFA
• Women Weaving Spaces on the Internet
• For an inclusive world

25 Years of Journeying - from Mexio to Beijing +5

by Gabrielle le Roux & Sonja Boezak

On Saturday, 3 June at the NGO Working Session, Devaki Jain, feminist economist, writer and activist, reflected on the “women’s conference journey” from Mexico to Beijing. As the beginning of the women’s decade, the conference in Mexico was a time of innovation, invention and perhaps the beginning of the world-wide women’s movement.

And now, here in New York, we are evaluating the gains made since the Beijing Conference in 1995. It has been a long struggle since 1975, and the questions we ask are not much different from where we started: what will be the outcome for women? Will women be less poor, less violated? Or will this conference result in a bigger gap between rhetoric and action? The realities are, however, that poverty has increased, so have the numbers of girl children dropping out of school; there is a rise in women’s unemployment and the acts of violence against women are more cruel.

What does this say about the enthusiasm with which women went to the conference in Mexico? Devaki Jain claims that between the conferences in Nairobi and Beijing “a different ethos emerged. To some extent it could be called the bureaucratisaton of the women’s movement.” The fact that NGOs are now able to participate in UN conferences from within, and are no longer trying to lobby their government delegations in forums outside these conferences, is a gain that is not to be discounted. Women’s NGOs now have access to their government delegations in open forums. But it seems that in the struggle to get into the house the message was somehow forgotten. The issues are still being discussed, but the roles of NGOs have, in many cases, gradually switched from activist to archivist.

Jain admits, however, that there have been marked achievements. Firstly, women’s stories are being recorded in a way that they had never been before. And secondly, there is an increase in the visibility of the plight (and sometimes, strengths) of women. But perhaps the most significant achievement has been the awareness that has been cultivated within governments and government systems. But still the challenge remains to have these achievements turn into more than ‘paper gains’ and rights.

It is not enough to speak about poverty, violence against women, education, and the other areas of concern without considering how these rights can become a reality. Perhaps it is time to revisit what it means to be an activist. That yes, it is vital to raise the issues and speak about them, but it is imperative to go to the next level and move to action.

Jain suggests that we perhaps need a “committee of 10 wise women to gather information on women’s mass struggles” after Beijing+5. This committee could draft proposals for action which could become a powerful tool toward social justice. Women’s NGOs need to move away from the “report card approach” and form social movements that share experiences, workable strategies and act.

Postulating government as the main player and the “women’s movement as the reporter of progress; a monitor” means that neither takes responsibility for change and transformation. NGOs, as civil actors have as much responsibility as government to ensure the well-being of the communities they serve. Democracy means speaking about change, as well as acting as agents for change.

Perhaps this week is an opportunity for us to evaluate and reinvigorate, and act as NGOs and governments, not merely documenting and monitoring events. The question is whether NGOs and governments alike will take up the challenge and break through the barriers of bureaucracy. And the challenge is to leave, not only with yet more conference papers, but with the same exuberance and hope as at the beginning of the decade of women, strategizing for action.

So what has the women’s movement learned from the past 25 years? “The conference journeys … have shown us how to use the international platform - the boys club - to recover the spirit and spirituality of these rebels, to generate a more focused political resistance which claims a revaluation of women,” says Jain.

As South African’s called for a long time during the struggle against apartheid: Aluta continua! The struggle continues…

Announcements:

Contributions
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People interested in participating in the Media Caucus are invited to join their daily meetings. On Monday 5, Wednesday 7 and Friday 9, it will meet at the IWTC Office, 3 rd floor, Church Centre. On Tuesday 6 and Thursday 8, it will meet at the Presbyterian Conference Room, 7th Floor, Church Centre.

Editorial: NGOs walking the line for the PFA

If we said that many of the NGOs attending the Beijing +5 Special Session of the UN General Assembly this week feel frustrated with the process we would not be exaggerating. Since the Beijing+5 Preparatory Committee in March most of the NGO community have had to follow the negotiations only from far away, and on arrival are being confronted with a nearly stalled process. The worst of it being that the texts put forward by some governments risk weakening the impact and words of the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA).

However, representatives of the NGO community have arrived; and certainly it is time to let the governments know that we are expecting delivery on a document that enables women all over the world to speed up the implementation of the PFA.

Part of the commitment from the NGO community to make the Beijing+5 process a genuine step forward has already been manifested through the elaboration of the alternative reports. These reports critically assess the different actors in the implementation of the PFA. Moreover, the NGO calendar for this week shows that this event will be used to build alliances and strategize around critical issues to strengthen and give more momentum to the global women’s movement.

The NGO representatives present have a responsibility, not only to our sisters who are not here, but to all those who support the PFA, to take every opportunity to urge governments to make strong commitments through their words in the ‘Outcome Document’; and not accepting phrases or words that would weaken the commitments made in Beijing. This might mean that the more quiet handing over of NGO alternative reports have to be accompanied by actions showing the combative spirit of the women’s movement - clear, loud and unyielding voices for greater justice.

Women Weaving Spaces on the Internet

“It seems to me that women have a choice - to give up on the Net, or to start shaping the Net ourselves, before it gets any more misshapen.” (Shaping the Internet for global justice, Agenda No.32, 1997, Agenda Editorial Collective)

Women's networks are nothing new. Women’s social, political, formal and informal networks have existed for centuries. The core reason for the existence of networks, is usually to share information. ABANTU for Development notes that it is often one of the few tools that are freely accessible to women who may be marginalised by the processes and decisions that shape their lives.

Networks do not operate in isolation. They are affected by external environments which are often harsh for women in Africa. African women are not a homogenous group and African women’s networks are diverse and complex. They are challenged by differences such as race, class, geographic location, access to essential resources such as education, land, water, health care and systems of credit. Electronic communication and access to new communication technologies are no exception. They are directly influenced by social reality.

Electronic networking has the potential to foster linkages between organisations, structures and projects. Geographical and national barriers can be broken. The Internet challenges the tension between local and global and makes information available that we would not otherwise have access to. Women's networks use the potential offered by the Internet to challenge gender injustice.

How Women’s Groups and Individual Women are Using Electronic Communication The Internet is being used by women’s networks in various ways that include: communicating, finding and sharing information, peer support, lobbying and advocacy, solidarity campaigns and research to advocate more equitable access to new communication technologies for women. Practical applications include distributing alternative, balanced and equitable portrayals of women; exchange views, experiences and news with other gender activists, promoting local, regional and global petitioning; publish material; share and promote organisational work; access and disseminate up-to-date information from around the world.

The speed and immediacy of electronic communication makes it an effective tool for activists to employ when responding to issues which demand immediate attention. The Internet has a wide reach and crosses national and geographical boundaries and is particularly effective when urgent responses are needed.

Examples of how the Internet is being used by women’s organisations are:

• Information sharing, solidarity, support
• Lobbying and advocacy
• Research
• Information development and dissemination
• Global Networking: crossing boundaries through a common issue (the Beijing process is a good example of this!)

• Education and Training
• ICT policy intervention
• Creating local, indigenous content
• Training girls to use new technologies
• Participatory Development: building web sites together
• Democratising Access to Information: using 'old' and 'new' technologies

Women in Africa are linking the implementation of ICTs to challenging the realities of poverty, sexual violence, political inequalities etc. locally and building a strong globally linked women’s movement in Africa. Globalisation is at the heart of this type of networking. African women have the choice to weave into the global network, or stay outside and watch the shrinking world exclude Africa and not learn from issues that are truly African. Weaving webs is about movement. The impact we make on issues of social justice depends on how nimbly we make our way through the existing webs in drawing our own lines through it.

The use of electronic spaces is an example of how women are stretching the boundaries and divides that allow them to network, organise and change the world.
Jenny Radloff Sonja Boezak
APC-Africa-Women

For an inclusive world
Irene León/ ALAI/WA2000

Neither the globalised world, in which this millennium was born, nor any local space, can be understod today, without visualizing the changes brought about by women’s participation. Among many things, women have inserted a focus of inclusivity into the world agenda. This conveys an ethical vision that promotes human solidarity as a principle of universal advancement of civilization.

This proposal is so self-evident that the Community of Nations has been pressed to take it seriously, by taking steps to reconceptualise rights, naming them and focusing on a significant range of mechanisms and plans, designed to make gender relationships more human. These refer both to macro-social aspects, such as economic relations, and to matters that until recently were considered domestic, and therefore insubstantial for international policy, such as sexuality and reproduction.

Over the last 25 years, the UN has had to move forward in qualitative terms. It has fine tuned its instruments, including criteria that bring the universality and indivisibility of rights to a concrete terrain. This process has included the four World Conferences on Women, celebrated in the last quarter century, the creation of specialised mechanisms dedicated to the universal promotion of women’s rights, and at the national scale, the creation of mechanisms incorporating a gender focus.

But the UN is not a neutral body. It is subject to the ups and downs of its member states, of the power relations between them, of their individual and collective inconsistencies, which move them to agree in one room and disagree in another. This ambivalence becomes patent in the case of women’s rights. The Vienna ’93 Conference recognized them as human rights, whose implementation is linked to issues of peace, while the Security Council where power is hyperconcentrated continues to act under a bellicose perspective.

The UN, as the first body designated to exercise global governance, justifies its existence through the promotion of democracy. But ironically, within its own structure it displays the limitations of an androcentric vision of democracy. An example would be the restrictions imposed on the participation, or even the presence, of numerous women’s organizations at this session. Similarly, the UN International Financial Institutions, especially the World Bank, IMF and WTO turn their backs to the protection of the common good and they persevere in promoting an exclusively market regime. They exert pressure on those who persist in the idea of redistribution of wealth and resources, or who resist their “higher goal” of the free circulation of goods and capital.

Under these parametres, questions of economic and social justice for women -in wage parity, work, education, health among others- are reduced to being good intentions which the market, leader of the excluding globalized dynamic, is supposed to provide.

For this very reason, in the context of this form of globalisation, it becomes more important than ever to strengthen the mechanisms and assign resources for concretising women’s rights, which is a key theme of this UNGASS session.

Staff: Dafne Sabanes Plou (editor), Sonja Boezak, Mavic Balleza, Irene Leon, Anne Walker, Lenka Simerska, Malin Bjork, Thais Aguilar, Sonia del Valle, Maria Eugenia Miranda, Cheekay Cinco
Translators: Sharon Hackett, Nicole Nepton, Roxanna Sooudi
Photographers: Lin Pugh, Anoma Rajakaruna, Maria Suarez
Design and layout: John Napolitano