CAIRO AND BEIJING
WHY WERE THEY WATERSHEDS?CAIRO, 1994
At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), 184 governments reached an unprecedented agreement on a new 20-year Programme of Action to achieve a balance between the world's people and its resources. Previous international agreements set demographic targets for limiting the world's population, and focused on contraceptive services to achieve them. In Cairo, the international community recognized the relationships between consumption and production patterns, economic development, population growth and structure, and environmental degradation. They emphasized the importance of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights over numerical population goals.The Programme of Action called for reforms in the global economy to place greater emphasis on social development and to support the most vulnerable members of society, including the poor, and especially women, who represent the majority of the world's poor. For the first time, the reproductive rights of women were central to an international agreement on population. This transformation of the meaning of "population" was due in large part to the influence exerted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), especially women's groups from all over the world.
BEIJING, 1995
In Beijing at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, governments reaffirmed and moved beyond what they had agreed on at Cairo. The conference was an acknowledgment that women's issues are the world's issues. The final document, the Platform for Action, reaffirmed the human rights of women and the critical importance of reproductive and sexual health and rights to women's empowerment and to the development of Southern countries.In Beijing, women served as delegates because they were professionals, experts, elected officials, activists and leaders of women's organizations. From these women, and their diverse perspectives, the overall messages of the conference emerged:
- Equality between men and women is not up for debate: it is desired, essential and will be achieved.
- Coercion, discrimination and violence must be eradicated from the lives of women wherever they occur -- in economics, politics, health care and within communities and families.
- The Cairo vision of population -- placing the health and well-being of women and their families before demographic goals -- is truly global policy.
- Women's rights are human rights.
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