GOALS, STRATEGIES, AND ACTIVITIES

LIST OF GOALS, STRATEGIES, AND ACTIVITIES

The following goals, strategies, and activities are drawn from the rapporteurs' summaries of conference days one, two, and three, and the reports of the working groups on days four and five. This is not an exhaustive list; see also the Rio Statement and the summaries of the working groups; in particular, the media working group.

THE DEVELOPMENT MODEL

Call on governments to change inequitable development models reinforced by the promotion of market-oriented economic frameworks, unequal terms of trade, and structural adjustment programs (SAPs).

Reassert the role of the state in ensuring the equitable distribution of resources and the satisfaction of basic needs.

Call on all governments to reduce resources allocated to military expenditures and increase allocations for social programs and productive activities, and for Northern governments and donors to stop supporting military and undemocratic regimes in the South.

Denounce and oppose the focus on population growth as the main cause of environmental degradation, and urge recognition of high consumption patterns and the military as major causes of environmental degradation.

Call on governments of donor countries and on international donor agencies to stop linking development assistance to the implementation of policies to control fertility.

Identify alternative development strategies within a basic framework of food security, adequate employment and incomes, and good-quality basic services.

Call for action by governments to end the trafficking of women and children (putting migration, prostitution, and trafficking in the context of gender, class, ethnicity, and North-South relations) .

POPULATION POLICIES

Campaign for the rejection of population policies that are intended to control the fertility of women and that do not address their basic right to a secure livelihood and freedom from poverty and oppression, or that do not respect their right to free, informed choice or to adequate health care.

Substitute discussion of population control policies with social policies that start from the concerns and priorities of women.

Document abuses of population control policies.

SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND HEALTH

Promote the use of the term "sexual" along with "reproductive rights and health."

Ensure that women's right to safe, legal, accessible, and affordable abortion is non-negotiable, and is inserted in the final documents adopted by governments at the ICPD. Develop women-centered indicators for monitoring and assessing health programs and services.

Develop mechanisms of accountability for governments, donors, and international agencies, including legal mechanisms.

Develop a women's health framework at global, national, and local levels to serve as a basis for negotiations and advocacy with governments, donors, and international organizations in order to lobby for greater expenditures on women's health.

Make sexual and reproductive health, and sexual and reproductive rights and ethics, a part of the curriculum in the training of all health professionals.

Work with men; particularly, include them in educational and counseling programs about their reproductive and sexual behavior, and their roles and responsibilities.

Campaign against harmful contraceptive practices; petition international agencies to stop research and development on immunological contraceptives (like the vaccine) and to redirect contraceptive research and development funding to women-controlled methods and barrier methods.

GENDER POWER AND SEXUALITY

Develop strategies that would support and affirm the bodily integrity of women, asserting that "our bodies, minds, and spirits belong to us."

Address gender power inequalities, raise gender awareness, and discuss issues of sexuality with both women and men.

Challenge gender stereotypes in the media and education, and initiate public debate on gender power and sexuality.

Develop an understanding of sexuality as we experience it ourselves-as individual women, in the women's organizations where we work, and in the wider women's movement-and make the links with assumptions of female sexuality that underlie social policies.

Denounce violence against women in all forms, by men or other women, in application of social norms, harmful practices, or customs such as genital mutilation and virginity tests.

Ensure that the ICPD documents include emphasis on the importance of sexuality, sexual health, and STD prevention, including that of HIV and AIDS.

POLITICAL PROCESSES

Build and strengthen networks, alliances, and coalitions between women's organizations and between these organizations and other NGOs and social movements for the promotion of reproductive rights and justice.

Develop the lobbying skills of women's organizations.

Link activists at national and international levels and generate instruments and actions that will allow us to use the political power of womenąs meetings and conferences.

Formulate principles and guidelines for alliance and coalition building within the women's movement, specifying the non-negotiables for making alliances.

Clarify the terms of interaction and negotiation with the state.

ADVOCACY
Prepare and disseminate declarations, statements, and letters to leaders, donors, and international institutions calling for, inter alia:

The cessation of population policies that are intended to control the fertility of women and that do not address their basic right to a secure livelihood and freedom from poverty and oppression, or that do not respect their right to free, informed choice or to adequate health care;

The cessation of funding or support for:

contraceptive research harmful to women;
fundamentalist movements that use the democratic process to attack human rights, and women's rights in particular;

Governments and multilateral institutions to address the adverse effects on women of inequitable development models and SAPs;

The use of the human rights framework to advance reproductive health and justice and to hold governments and international organizations accountable.

HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUMENTS
Utilize the human rights framework to achieve sexual and reproductive rights and health, and explore the ways human rights concepts, laws, and mechanisms can be applied to this area. These include:

Demanding women's rights to bodily integrity

reproductive and sexual control, as well as freedom from violent abuse;
as a fundamental human right during war and conflict situations and in everyday life.

Demanding that government shape services (adequate health care, education, housing, etc.) to fulfill the socioeconomic rights and needs of women.

Holding the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United Nations, and other international agencies accountable to human rights standards in their policies and allocation of resources.

Countering fundamentalist forces that advocate policies and pass laws that violate women's human rights.

Developing specific human rights-based strategies for women during war and occupation, including lobbying with the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Ratifying the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and assuring representation by women NGOs in monitoring implementation, particularly with regard to violence against women.

FUNDING

Study the organizational structures and resource potential of donor agencies to enable women and women's organizations to realize their institutional goals.

WITHIN THE ICPD PROCESS

Organize workshops and other educational activities at all levels, and specifically at Prep Com III and during the ICPD itself, on topics such as:

Fundamentalism, with special emphasis on reproductive health and justice.

The linking of reproductive rights and health to social policies and the substitution of population policies for social development policies.

The sexual and reproductive rights and health of women of color, indigenous women, women of ethnic minorities, women with disabilities, refugee and migrant women.

Models of women-centered, comprehensive, integrated services such as those of the Bangladesh Women's Health Coalition and the Gabriela clinics in the Philippines.

Critique and comment on the draft UN document for ICPD and send it to the ICPD secretariat, governments, and other key actors in the process.

Create a commission that consolidates the national and regional positions of the women's movement on the ICPD draft to create an instrument for lobbying.

Produce indicators and mechanisms for the follow-up of the resolutions made at the ICPD in Cairo.

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