Beijing+10
Briefing Paper

The Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) was the outcome of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, in September 1995. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) were adopted unanimously by 189 world governments, who agreed to remove all obstacles to equality for women and to ensure a gender perspective in all government policies and programmes.

Background to the Beijing Platform for Action

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises in Article 1 that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. It is argued, however, that human rights have been defined, protected and promoted according to the experiences and interests of men rather than women.

The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 marked a high point in the global women’s movement for full recognition of women’s rights as human rights. The movement for the recognition of women’s rights as human rights has its roots in the International Women’s Year (1975) and the UN Decade on Women (1976-1985). The ten years between 1975 and 1985 saw the first three world conferences on women – in Mexico (1975), Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985). The Third World Conference on Women in 1985 resulted in the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies to the Year 2000. This document paved the way for the recognition by governments at the Second World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993) that “the human rights of women and the girl-child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights.”

The recognition of women’s universal human rights poses fundamental challenges for governments and the international community. It demands that women be taken seriously as full and equal human beings in a world where women experience severe inequalities in social, economic, civil, political and cultural arenas. It insists that the frameworks for analysing all of these areas must be informed equally by women’s perspectives as well as men’s. It compels governments and all other actors to take action to radically transform societal relationships and structures in order to create a truly more just society for both women and men.

Since the Second World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, new ways of thinking informed by such a gender analysis have been reflected in agreements on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) and the Social Summit on Development (Copenhagen, 1995). At the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, governments agreed the Beijing Platform for Action, one of the most comprehensive articulations of Governments' commitments to the human rights of women and girls. It contains an analysis of the underlying causes of poverty and discrimination, and its strategies and actions outline what human rights commitments to women would actually mean. At the core of the Beijing Platform for Action is the idea of accountability - that governments have a duty to implement these commitments.

But the political will to advance these rights is often lacking. Indeed, the Platform's human rights principles are often undermined by discriminatory laws, social and cultural practices, lack of willingness to invest significant resources in it, and the impact of globalisation. The Platform for Action and the Outcomes Document of Beijing+5 both recognise that governments have a duty to take measures to ensure that the commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action are not undermined by the negative effects of economic globalisation and the neo-liberal economic model. Thus, the implementation of the BPfA also raises questions of global governance - of how to hold international institutions like Multi-National Corporations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation accountable when their policies violate or lead to the violation of women's human rights. For more information read Banúlacht's Briefing Paper on Gender and Trade.

The Beijing Platform for Action was drafted and adopted by governments, but hundreds and thousands of women activists worldwide have contributed during all the phases of developing, drafting and then monitoring and implementing the Platform for Action. The Beijing Platform for Action is not about abstractions - the issues in it affect the lives and cause the deaths of women and girls everyday. But the recommendations in the Platform are only meaningful if women know them and use them to further policy and action at all levels.

Since the 1990s, women’s organisations in Ireland and worldwide have used the review processes of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to demand that governments fulfil the commitments that they have made in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and in many subsequent human rights treaties and world conferences.

In 2000, at the time of the Beijing+5 Review, women’s organisations in Ireland joined the thousands of women’s NGOs worldwide in calling governments to account, and demanding resources and political will to achieve the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

In 2005, at the Beijing+10 Review, the world’s governments adopted a Political Declaration of full and unequivocal reaffirmation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA). The BPFA, therefore remains a cornerstone of international women’s human rights.

The Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals

In 2000 the world’s governments adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Declaration aims to address people’s needs for the new millennium and recognises women’s centrality in development processes. In it, governments commit “to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.” The Declaration also addresses “the equal rights and opportunities of women and men” and pledges “to combat all forms of violence against women and to implement CEDAW."

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), published in 2001 as a ‘road map’ for the implementation of the Declaration, address several of the 12 Critical Areas of Concern in the Platform for Action adopted at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, namely poverty (1), education (2), health (5) and environmental sustainability (7). The Millennium Declaration explicitly includes a commitment to implement CEDAW. The UN Commission on the Status of Women at its Beijing+10 Review in March 2005 adopted this perspective. The Political Declaration of the CSW emphasises that “[t]he full and effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) is essential to achieving the internationally agreed development goals including those contained in the Millennium Declaration”. The declaration further recognises that the “implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and CEDAW are mutually reinforcing in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

It is undoubtedly positive that for the first time world governments have set our clear commitments to addressing issues such as world poverty and health, and have established time-bound targets and measurable indicators. However, the MDGS divorce issues such as poverty from underlying structural causes, such as gender power relations and racism, and lack the explicit underpinning of the human rights framework. The Beijing Platform for Action, by contrast, reflects an understanding of the global context and the multiple causes of poverty and disadvantage, and recognises the complex interactions between, for example, reproductive rights and freedom from gender based violence and women’s empowerment.

It is of crucial importance, therefore, that the Beijing Platform for Action is recognised as a central mechanism for the realisation of women’s human rights and of the MDG 3. For more informaton read Banúlacht's Briefing Paper on MDGs.

Banúlacht and the Beijing Process 1995-2005

As a development education NGO with a focus on development issues from a feminist perspective, Banúlacht works to promote dialogue and debate on gender and development. A central focus of our work over the last ten years has been the implementation of women’s human rights in the context of development cooperation. Banúlacht took an active role with regard to the Fourth World Conference on Women held at Beijing in 1995. Representatives of Banúlacht participated as advisers on the Irish government delegation to the preparatory meeting for the European region in 1994 and as members of the government delegation to the World Conference. Banúlacht also coordinated the participation of Irish women’s organisations at the NGO Forum held in parallel with the Conference. Between 1998 and 2000, we carried out awareness raising about the content and significance of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing Platform for Action).

For the Beijing+5 Review in 2000, we prepared a research document on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, entitled ‘Putting the Action into Beijing’. Based on this research, we held a series of regional consultations with women’s networks. The outcomes of these consultations informed a submission to government for Beijing+5. This submission addressed implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the contexts of both domestic policy and development cooperation.

In parallel to our consultations with locally based women’s networks, we also brought together larger and nationally based organisations, including Women’s Aid, Aontas, Amnesty International and the National Women’s Council of Ireland, for a consultation meeting in January 2000, with Edna Aquino, of Amnesty International as a speaker. This meeting led to the creation of the Pro-Beijing Women’s NGO Coalition. As a member of this coalition, we participated in the drafting of a Beijing+5 Shadow Report. Banúlacht also took a leading role in the production of a poster entitled ‘Promises Made Promises Broken’ and a further series of regional consultations with women’s groups and organisations. (The Pro-Beijing Women’s NGO Coalition subsequently established the Women’s Human Rights Alliance as an independent feminist human rights organisation.)

Banúlacht representatives attended the Beijing+5 Review in an NGO observer capacity, and attended both the 2004 UNECE PrepCom for Beijing+10 and the Beijing+10 Review/CSW 2005 as members of the Irish delegation.

In preparation for Beijing+10, Banúlacht liased closely with the Women’s Human Rights Alliance and Network Women in Development Europe (WIDE), and participated in a Global Strategy Meeting (New York December 2004) and a WIDE Strategy Meeting (Rome, February 2005). We produced a series of briefings for NGOs, development agencies and women’s networks and circulated information and analysis received through international women’s organisations. For Beijing+10, a key focus of our work was lobbying of the Department of Foreign Affairs (the Human Rights Unit and Development Cooperation Ireland) in order first to secure places on the delegation, and subsequently in relation to advocacy points relevant to the political processes at the CSW.

Links

WHRnet
www.WHRnet.org

Beijing and Beyond
www.beijingandbeyond.org

Peacewomen
www.peacewomen.org

Choike
www.choike.ie