Editorial

Emotions and frustrations are on the rise among NGO women faced with perceived backsliding on the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights, one of the most important causes women have defended for many years now.

After significant progress in past conferences and summits, especially in Beijing and Cairo - both in 1995 - the process used in the current evaluation is allowing isolated factions and countries to set aside previous engagements and come back with regressive positions.

NGOs' concerns are shared by numerous government delegations who have identified this theme as central to the polarisations that are showing up in plenaries and in working groups. While for some the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights is a question of human rights, for others their non-recognition is just as important.

For women's NGOs and for those delegations who have made these rights a priority, the freedom to make one's own decisions and the right to choose are fundamental to the rights of individuals as well as being linked to basic human rights. In addition, sexual and reproductive processes are one of the principal causes of mortality and morbidity among the world's women.

The instrumentalisation of women's reproductive capacity is related to a social construction that implies complex manipulations of human sexuality and transforms women's bodies into the material of reproductive labour. For this reason, the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights is related not only to procreation but also to "labour rights": reproductive work, like all work, is vulnerable to exploitation.

It is therefore not surprising that for the women from NGOs, the pursuit of progress, and not regression, in the recognition of these rights is not, and will never be, negotiable

Bringing feminist sound to the Internet Live radio broadcasting via the Internet at the Beijing+5

By Malin Björk

Maria Suarez and Katerina Katerina Anfossi, from AC FIRE (Communication association of Feminist International Radio Endeavour) based in Costa Rica, highlight that radio is an excellent tool to amplify women's voices. FIRE broadcasts live via the Internet every day here at the Beijing+5 UN General Assembly Special Session.

Every day two Areas of Critical Concern of the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA) are being treated in the radio program. The specific focus of all the programs is whether media has been a support or rather an obstacle in the implementation of the PFA in relation to each one of the critical areas.

There are several reasons why FIRE has chosen to prioritize radio in their communication activities. Maria Suarez gives us several reasons: " radio is cheap, it allows us to use our best form of expression - the oral language, and radio also allows for different kinds of intimacy". Intimacy, meaning that it can give voice to people without the risk of them being judged by anything but what they have to tell us, and intimacy also in the sense that you can be doing 100 things at the same time as listening to the radio.

Maria Suarez says that some of the added value that FIRE has gained from broadcasting via the Internet is that Internet radio broadcasting constitutes an increased possibility for exchange, and that programs can easier feed our programs to other stations.

In terms of technology used, FIRE decided to "bring the new technologies to the radio production" instead of vice versa, which is what the male technicians are saying that the FIRE radio producers should have done. So, Maria Suarez says that it is actually very simple - "you just do radio, but plug it into a computer". With this technique, FIRE has managed to get very good sound over the Internet, which can be a problem with Internet radio broadcasting.

FIRE is also a member of the women's network of AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters). Suarez says that the important aspects of participation in different international networks is that this allows for sharing of material and information, to share technological knowledge about the tools, and to build alliances for promoting women's rights to communicate by all different means.

Why surf when you can march?

Sharon Hackett, CDEACF

The year 1998 marked the beginning of two major projects in Quebec : the Quebec Women's Federation (FFQ) launched the World March, and the Resource Centre for Adult Education and Status of Women (CDEACF) began "Internet au féminin." The first of these two projects, well-known throughout the world, is one of the most important mobilisations women have ever undertaken together. The second, more regional in scope, nonetheless had a huge impact, offering basic Internet training to over 300 women and helping hundreds of others take their first steps on Internet, thereby helping francophone women to close a five-year gap in Internet use that separated them from their anglophone sisters in North America.

What do these projects have in common? The opening to the world that they brought to their regional women's movement and the fact that their success depended on Internet.

Internet has allowed the World March to keep in touch with several thousand groups in an ever-growing number of countries. Every country, every region finds its own "2000 good reasons to march." Women rally round even more readily because the major symbolic action is one that women's groups have been doing for centuries: the protest march.

For a typical feminist, it is a lot harder to find "2000 good reasons to surf". In Europe and North America, where infrastructures are generally robust and highly developed, albeit with serious lacks in rural and isolated regions, Internet connections are often inexpensive and easy to obtain. But connectivity is not everything. The cost of a computer may be beyond the reach of a group, especially for smaller groups. Even when a group is already using machines to do word processing, it is far from certain they will have the technical savvy required to benefit from what Internet has to offer.

So why get on line? Why put additional stress on already-overburdened financial and human resources? In many cases, consciousness-raising is necessary before a group can even imagine that information and communications technologies can be useful to them. When they realize, in very down-to-earth terms, the sorts of savings in time and money (the cost of long-distance telephones and faxes, for example) Internet can offer them, when they see the rich documentation put on line by universities, governments, and NGOs, it is not rare to see groups make a special effort to find the resources necessary for the installation of new technologies.

Once they are on line, groups must have training, targeted, women-specific training that will allow them to go beyond mere on-line "survival" and into genuine on-line activism. Often once a group has its e-mail addresses and starts swapping Word documents with others, they think they're all set, technologically speaking. In fact, the growing amount of information, petitions, action calls they receive seem more like part of the problem than part of the solution. "After all," jokes one activist, "my poor elected officials can only take so many faxes from me on any given day..." But information and communications technologies are so much more than just an extension of the phone and the fax!

E-mail is only the first taste of what new technologies have to offer. Women must use as much creativity in the use of the whole range of technologies available to us as we use in finding funding; in the near future it may determine our survival as a movement. Women are already helping women find ideas: the Canadian feminist site Women'Space mentions "22 feminist ways to use the Internet" and the list of best practices could go on indefinitely. The principle that underlies them, though is the same:

Without information there can be no participation.

The Beijing conference woke up many women to this reality. Since then, the participation of groups in the Beijing review process has been greatly facilitated by the use of ICTs: many of you have benefited, for example, from the information disseminated through various WomenAction channels over the last few months.

Without e-mail, there would be no March of Women. Without women's medias on Internet, we could not follow the Beijing review process. Without information and communications technologies, there can be no effective global women's movement.

What we need is a strategic use of ICTs. What will allow us to develop such practices is targeted, women-oriented training.

Millions of women need better health policies

Health is a fundamental human right. The basic human rights of young and adult women and girls to health include the right to life, to liberty and security of person; to equality before the law; to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health; to privacy and confidentiality; to self-determined sexuality and sexual pleasures; to choose if, when and with whom to have sexual relations or to marry; and to choose if and when to have children and under what conditions. They also include the right to full and reliable medical information; to informed consent, choice and decision-making in health care, reproduction and infant-feeding; to safe and equitable conditions of work and environment; and to the benefits of scientific progress. Worldwide, millions of women lack access to adequate health care services, including a full range of safe, reliable and acceptable forms of contraception. Women and girls are more vulnerable to STIs, including HIV/AIDS, due to biological, social, economic and cultural factors. Rates of maternal mortality and morbidity remain unacceptably high. Unsafe abortions account for at least 13 to 15 per cent of all maternal deaths. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in women. Women are increasingly subject to a range of harmful and addictive products, such as tobacco. One of out five healthy days of life is lost to girls and women who are subjected to gender-based violence. Health care and social services generally do not recognise symptoms of gender-based violence nor do they provide adequate treatment, protection and support to the women and girls in need. Existing policies, programmes and services do not take into account the situation of women in gender-disempowered relations in personal and public spheres, where women's health is still affected by racism, ageism, sexism, and cultural, religious and patriarchal prejudices.

In the meeting last March, the Health Caucus reaffirmed the recommended actions of the Cairo Programme of Action, the Beijing Platform for Action and the Cairo+5 document, and urged Governments to:

1. Take all necessary steps to ensure that all women throughout the life-cycle have the right to access the highest quality of comprehensive health services, particularly sexual and reproductive health services, free of any forms of discrimination including those based on age, class, race, ethnicity, civil status, religion, culture, sexuality, dis/ability, health and fertility status, and geographic location. Ensure all health services are accessible, affordable, appropriate and internationally acceptable to the needs of young and adult women and girls. Recognise the unique health needs of adolescents, especially adolescent girls, and provide specific services, education and information to address these needs, particularly on sexual and reproductive health issues, and on sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.
2. Increase resources for the health care of all women and girls, particularly for women who are marginalised, indigenous, rural and urban poor, disabled, elderly, HIV positive and those with migrant and refugee status, and establish accountability mechanisms to monitor government actions in this area. Provide financial and other forms of needed support for unwaged caregivers, including older women, since they provide more health services than all health industries combined.
3. Use all forms of education as a tool to improve women's own use of health care services. Expand women's educational opportunities, and offer reproductive health and age-specific sexuality education to women of all ages.
4. Expand and accelerate efforts to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity. Strengthen maternal and child health care services, including safe pregnancy and delivery and promotion of infant nutrition and breastfeeding. Ensure that the International Labour Organization (ILO) Maternity Protection Convention (103) and Recommendation (95) are revised at the ILO Conference in June 2000 to strengthen entitlements for women at work. Implement the International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes.
5. Ensure that women and girls live in environments that protect their health with access to adequate nutrition, safe food, clean water, sanitation and shelter. Ensure that women have the opportunity to participate in and make decisions concerning the management of these resources at policy levels.
6. Integrate human rights, ethics, and gender and age perspectives into education and training for all health workers at all levels. Ensure that health workers provide all women and girls with respect, privacy, confidentiality, and nonjudgmental and empowering care that is free of any forms of coercion, discrimination, threat, intimidation and violence based on age, class, race, ethnicity, civil status, religion, culture, sexuality, dis/ability, health and fertility status and geographic location. Provide these health workers with gender equitable and safe working conditions, and equal pay for work of equal value.
7. Train and equip health service providers and take all necessary measures to ensure that abortion is safe, legal, accessible and provided non-judgmentally to women of all ages, free of fear, discrimination and coercion; and that, if necessary, effective and timely referrals are made to another qualified provider. Protect providers of safe abortions and women seeking abortion-related services, including counselling and post-abortion care, from harassment, violence and coercion. Remove legislation criminalising abortion and which punish health care workers who perform abortions and women who undergo abortion. Reduce the need for abortion by providing accurate information about emergency contraception and making it readily available.
8. Eliminate all forms of gender-based violence, honour killings, sexual coercion, abuse, exploitation, and harmful practices and attitudes against women and girls; notably rape including marital rape, female genital mutilation, and child and forced marriage, and violence committed during armed conflicts. Recognise that all women have the right to sexual pleasure. Provide resources for violence prevention, shelter, support and health services required by survivors. Adopt fully a gender-based and comprehensive multi-sectoral approach to meeting the needs of survivors of violence.
9. Develop policies and effective programmes for young and adult men and boys to develop responsible behaviour and attitudes conducive to gender equality and equity and women's empowerment, particularly in relation to men's sexual responsibility.
10. Establish institutional mechanisms for women to participate fully and equally in decision-making regarding health issues, particularly sexual and reproductive health and rights, mental health, occupational and environmental health issues. Implement affirmative actions to increase the number of women in policymaking, research, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of health policies and programmes, with the goal to ensure equal and equitable participation of young and adult women.
11. Ensure that economic and health reforms, trade agreements and structural adjustment policies fully guarantee the provision of safe, affordable, equitable, accessible, appropriate and the highest quality of health, education and social services. Redirect an amount equivalent to at least five per cent of military expenditures annually to young and adult women's and girls' health services.
12. Ensure that public health and environmental health are placed before commercial interests, such as trade agreements and the marketing and promotion of tobacco and other harmful products. Ensure equal and equitable access to essential drugs, equipment and medical supplies, including those related to sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, inter alias modern contraceptives, anti-retroviral drugs, female and male condoms, spermicides and microbicides under development. Prevent expropriation of indigenous medicines and knowledge. Prohibit the export of internationally substandard and potentially hazardous medical equipment, technologies, drugs, toxic waste and chemicals such as pesticides, to developing countries.
13. Develop in collaboration with women NGOs practical tools and a monitoring framework of indicators, including financial, gender and age-specific indicators, for maternal health, breastfeeding, contraception, diagnosis and treatment for infertility, abortion and post-abortion care, cancer-screening, HIV/AIDS programmes, etc. within the national health budget.
14. Commit more resources to research on women's health and ensure that all research on women's health include a gender perspective and conform to the highest ethical and scientific standards, including fully informed decision-making and consent by young and adult women and girls. In keeping with the right to benefit from the fruits of scientific progress, women and girls should have access to research findings and should benefit from the utilization of these results to formulate gender sensitive policies and programmes.
15. Allocate additional and sufficient funding for research into the prevention, detection and treatment of all cancers, particularly breast, lung, cervical and ovarian cancers.
16. Address the impact of determinants of health such as racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and presence and levels of disability on women's and girls' physical, emotional, mental and social health. These forms of discrimination are implicit in globalization and they exacerbate the challenges women and girls of all ages already face in achieving health.

Net Gains: African Women Take Stock of ICTs

By Zohra Khan, FLAME/FLAMME

Where do African women fit in with the information technology boom? Handicapped by poor infrastructure, low levels of literacy and general under-development, Africa is yet to fully harness this important tool. And yet there are many stories of success across the continent.

The Association for Progressive Communications-Africa-Women and Femnet has launched the results of research on African women and their use of ICTs. This qualitative study, conducted by Gender Links, examines the progress that African women have made in accessing and applying information technology.

• ICTs offer immense possibilities for reducing poverty, improving governance and advancing gender equality in Africa
• Access and connectivity is still a concern
• ICTs have changed women's personal lives
• ICTs cut the costs of communication
• The search for African generated web sites showed an increase in useful gender information
• Far more research needs to be done on linking ICTs to oral traditions and for transmitting knowledge and wisdom.

• ICTs provide the most cost-effective way of serving remote, rural areas without the huge infrastructure costs of traditional landlines.
• The applications of ICTs to improving social services are enormous. Basic education could be vastly improved (for example, through teacher training and reaching un-served populations). The World Health Organisation (WHO) claims "40% of health is exchanging information. " Many of the problems of health prevention relate to poor communications and limited access to information. ICTs are of enormous value in the control of epidemics and contagious diseases.
• Participation in the information economy and the development of e-businesses itself offers many possibilities for wealth creation particularly for small and micro enterprises.
• ICTs have the potential to improve the ability of marginalised groups to participate in governance across the spectrum. He adds: "There are great risks to globalisation and to information technology. But the greatest risk of all is to pretend they don't exist!"

New magazine: Fair Play - Gender & Development Magazine of KARAT Coalition

This unique magazine is a networking tool for women's organisations of Central and Eastern Europe united in the KARAT Coalition (www.karat.org). Every issue is prepared by an international team of contributors who reside in different countries and communicate via e-mail. The goal is to provide the regional perspective to important issues affecting women's lives in the post-communist countries. The KARAT Coalition originated out of the common problems that women face in the transition from a totalitarian communist past to a free market society and the need to give women's organisations a voice and space. The first issue is being distributed right here at the UNGASS and it is dedicated to the Beijing+5 process. It is different from the comming issues, it presents KARAT Coalition's structure and history, and archives important documents produced by KARAT. Each of the following issues will focus on one topic area that is of key importance to women's advancement in the transition countries, also women's art and up-to-date information will not be missing.

Sumbissions are welcome at: Women's Alliance for Development, 52 Neofit Rilski Street, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria, tel./fax: +359-2-9805532, 9809447, e-mail: wad@infotel.bg.

Sexual orientation and the need to recognize the rights of all women

By Phumi Mtetwa

Five years ago in Beijing, many human rights activists from all over the world urged the delegates at the 4th World Conference on Women to recognise that sexual orientation had a place within the Platform for Action (PFA). Despite extensive lobbying and advocacy, these two words - sexual orientation - did not make its way into the final PFA.

Lesbians, being part of the diverse women's movement, work in organizations to advance the rights of all women, from the alleviation of poverty to the right to participate in decision-making processes; from fighting violence against women, to campaigning for women's access to justice.

Five years since the Beijing conference, we return to review progress made to advance or achieve the principles laid down in the BPFA. During that time, we have seen some good and positive initiatives undertaken by states and regions in regards to, among other things, the right to be free from persecution on the basis of ones sexual orientation. We have further seen some states going beyond mere recognition, but also enacting laws designed to eliminate stereotype, prejudice and oppression on the basis of sexual orientation.

Whilst these many positive steps have been happening, so has the contrary continued to exacerbate in many corners of the world. Persecution, discrimination, and exclusion on almost every level of society on the basis of sexual orientation is for many ¨daily bread¨. The fact that many lesbians have to flee their countries, are denied employment and access to social services is a violation of women's human- and sexual rights.

The Beijing+5 process have been met with major frustrations, and reflecting on the theme of the conference, ¨Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the 21st Century, key questions that are fundamental to the achievement of the sentiments expressed in this theme impose themselves. These include, among others, whether we can afford to stand and watch countries sanction certain principles on the emancipation and celebration of all women´s diversities and watch the tireless efforts made by women and feminists go unchallenged.

The fact is that there are attributes and characteristics which have the potential to impair the fundamental human dignity of persons as human beings and that affect them adversely in comparably serious manner. If unchallenged, at any level, this will have a profound impact, not just on the person experiencing the injustice and others in her/his situation, but on all of us. Discriminatory provisions or failure to provide protection, reinforces already existing societal prejudices and severely increases the negative effects of such prejudices on their lives.

The Most Human Of All Rights

By Irene León

It is said that sexual and reproductive rights are the most human of all rights, since they are intimately related to personal choice, and moreover, the creation of humankind. We have had to wait, though, for the end of the 20th Century to see these rights and liberties begin to take shape in the international community.

Furthermore, the majority of countries up until now not only leave the formulation of official sexual and reproductive policies aside, but the also allow their postures to reflect serious timelessness with respect to these problematics; the representatives have no hesitation in maintaining these postures in the very heart of the UN.

For centuries, there prevailed the idea that sexuality and reproduction were indivisible and guided only by a static and linear version of morality. This perspective laid the foundations for procedures, institutions, and authoritarian rules that served to expropriate from women decisions about their own bodies and lifestyles. These criteria later served as a base to create a demographic vision of sexuality and reproduction, rooted exclusively in economic criteria and the so-called collective interest.

In this light, the proposal for rights returns to these aspects of life their human quality, and allows sexuality and reproduction to be focused on separately, thus displaying that the implementation is not always related to the same motivations.

This perspective is related to a search for democracy in private life, and the key concept that unfolds here is autonomy. This paves the way for the freedom to make decisions and the right to choose, and it is crucial that education and the access to information form part of this autonomy.

The different cultural interventions on sexuality, oriented towards manipulating reproductive possibilities for women, are related to a social construction that involves the most complex manipulations of human sexuality, namely converting women's bodies into mediums of reproductive work. For this reason, the establishment of sexual and reproductive rights is related not only to procreative conditions, but also relations of reproductive labor, which like all forms of labor, is susceptible to exploitation.

Reproduction involves everything from a bodily process (gestation) to the assistance of social and economic services and emotional conditions, all of which can span a whole lifetime. To this extent, implementing this perspective of rights involves the essential and full consideration of symbolic, physical and educational aspects of procreation.

The freedom to choose involves independence and the exercise of citizenship. To create a milieu where people can decide when and in what conditions they can choose reproduction, without the pressure to do or not do so, will broaden and extend the democratic setting of sexual and reproductive rights to private life.

Finally, the establishment of these rights opens up the possibility of eradicating certain illegitimate forms of thinking, such as the moral and psychic damage caused by homophobia, prejudices against women, psychological abuse, obligatory heterosexuality, sexual violence, imposed marriages and forced reproduction, this last one being of the principal causes of mortality and morbidity in the world.

Bodily integrity is a question of dignity and human rights. The recognition of this kind of integrity heralds the possibility of constructing a sense of sexual democracy that is intimately tied to a broader process of democratization, which in turn allows individuals to blossom.

Unfortunately, the focus of rights must also be related to the socio-cultural practices of institutions that for centuries have tended towards authoritarian regulation of human sexual behavior. The actualization of societal advancements is an immediate challenge, without which the multiple advancements women have achieved would continue to be tributaries of elemental issues of nature, in the crude sense of the word.

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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