WOMEN REDRAWING THE MAP:
THE WORLD AFTER THE BEIJING AND CAIRO CONFERENCES

Joan Dunlop, Rachel Kyte, and Mia MacDonald

In Beijing at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, governments reaffirmed and moved beyond what they had agreed at recent global conferences on the environment (Rio 1992), human rights (Vienna 1993), population and development (Cairo 1994) and social development (Copenhagen 1995). Indeed, this series of conferences made the achievements in Beijing possible.

The Beijing Conference was a turning point in the world's understanding; an acknowledgment that women's issues are the world's issues, and vice versa. It provided a clear indication of global priorities for the next century, and of women's centrality to them. The Conference's final document, the Platform for Action, demonstrates that the agreements reached in Cairo at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) is accepted global policy. And for the second time in 12 months, countries of the world reaffirmed the human rights of women and the critical importance of reproductive and sexual health and rights to women's empowerment and to development.

Beijing marked the first time a United Nations women's conference had as its central focus the human rights of women-economic, social, cultural, civil and political. Beijing also represents the coming of age of the international women's movement, with women playing key roles in the inter-governmental negotiations as delegates, advisors, and advocates. Since the 1985 UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi, women around the world have mobilized in their communities, countries and internationally to gain access, successfully, to the arenas where policies are made and implemented.

Billed as a conference on equality, peace, and development, the Beijing meeting, at its core, was about eliminating coercion, discrimination, and violence in the public and private lives of women. Governments urged that: economic and employment policies recognize women's unpaid contributions to the economy, eliminate differentials in pay between men and women for equal work; and women be guaranteed equal access to public office, education, basic health care, and all other aspects of public and private life. In addition, they called for elimination of violence in the home and in public, where rape is not only a crime against the individual, but is still used as a weapon of war. Finally, the governments represented in Beijing reaffirmed what they had agreed in Vienna in 1993, that international human rights laws and standards must not be diluted by religious practices, or tradition when applied to women.

The conference opened with 35 percent of its Platform in "square brackets" because governments could not agree to terms. [Square brackets are placed around language that has not been accepted by consensus, pending further negotiation or, ultimately, reservation by a delegation at the end of the conference. All brackets must be removed by the conference's end; reservations are the means for countries to state on the record that they do not agree with particular sections or words of the final agreement.] Yet, by its final session, the conference had, as Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland said in her closing speech, "unbracket[ed] the lives of girls and women." When the negotiations ended, just before dawn on the morning of September 15, governments had agreed to the strongest international document ever detailing the reality of women's lives and which called for sustained and precise action.

In this article, we will analyze how the Fourth World Conference on Women took the global community beyond the achievements of the recent series of global conferences in critical ways. In particular, we discuss the importance of the conference's strong reaffirmation of the new conceptualization of population-related health and development policies agreed on at the ICPD in 1994 which centered on women's reproductive health and rights. We also compare and contrast key dimensions of the process and outcomes of the ICPD and the Fourth World Conference on Women, including the genesis of leadership, political actors-not only government delegations but also non-governmental women's organizations-and the pattern and content of the diplomatic negotiations. We provide details of the most important points governments agreed in Beijing, many of which are unprecedented. A concluding section summarizes what the Beijing Platform for Action means for women's lives around the world, what it shows about the process of negotiating global agreements, and how real change can take place.


A Global Shift

The Fourth World Conference on Women was the culmination of a series of global conferences that caused a re-examination and reshaping of governments' understanding of the role of the international community, as well as the global understanding of development. The agreements reached at the Earth Summit in 1992 and the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 created momentum for the breakthrough agreements reached at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. There, 184 governments reached an unprecedented consensus on a twenty-year Programme of Action to balance the world's peoples with its resources. The Programme puts women's equality, empowerment, reproductive rights, and sexual health at the center of population and development policies.

Previous international agreements on population have set demographic targets for limiting population growth and have focused on contraceptive services as the method to achieve these goals. By contrast, in Cairo the international community recognized the interrelationships between consumption and production patterns, economic development, population growth and structure, and environmental degradation. Also in Cairo, the understanding of the term "population" was broadened significantly, in large part due to the influence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), especially women's groups from all over the world.


Impact of the Women's Movement and Southern Leadership

The outcome of the ICPD provoked some conservative delegations to threaten to use the Beijing conference to turn back agreements women had achieved in Cairo. Most of the opposition came from delegations that had not fully accepted the Cairo accord, specifically its provisions on reproductive health and reproductive rights. Such groups included the Holy See, conservative Islamic countries, and several states in Latin America. Despite this challenge, governments of the world were able to achieve a consensus on a Platform for Action that included verbatim language from Cairo (including reproductive and sexual health and reproductive rights), as well as language that extends and operationalizes the Cairo Programme of Action in key areas.

As in Cairo, much of the progress achieved in Beijing was due to the capacity, skill, and tenacity of women's NGOs from all over the world, who worked at regional conferences, preparatory meetings and at the Beijing conference itself to move government delegations towards consensus. Rooted in the experience of domestic campaigns over the last 20 years, the series of international women's conferences (Mexico City, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980; Nairobi, 1985), and the force of women's organizations at the recent global conferences, women had refined an inside-outside lobbying strategy. They gave priority to ensuring that feminists were made members of government delegations, worked with delegations at preparatory meetings, and had crafted specific language for negotiation. Many of the over 7,000 women from NGOs who were accredited to the conference worked as a pressure group, and interpreted the complexity of issues and negotiations to the international media.

Contrary to assertions in the press and by opposition delegations, the bulk of the progress came not from Northern radical feminists, but from women of the South. It was clear, the political fulcrum had shifted from Northern to Southern countries, and from men to women. Consensus on sexual rights, abortion, adolescent access to services, the right to inheritance and succession, and most other issues covered by the Platform for Action were forged primarily by delegates who were neither white, nor liberal, nor necessarily feminist. What really happened is that governments of the world, represented by women delegates, stepped forward to acknowledge the realities of women's lives. Delegates wanted to leave Beijing with a document that reflected those realities and that committed the world's governments to take concrete and effective action to end coercion, discrimination, and violence against women of all forms.

Central to this process was the leadership of Africa which had been given focus and energy by the moral authority of South Africa; the courage of many Latin American countries in breaking free of the influence of the Vatican hierarchy, and the steadfastness of the Caribbean. These countries placed women in key positions in their delegations who were not swayed from progressive language on human rights, sexuality, and inheritance, among other contentious issues.


The Preparatory Process

The Conference in Beijing was prefaced by a preparatory process that gained momentum over a two year period. Part of the planning for Beijing took place in the context of the ongoing review of implementation of the recommendations of the last women's conference in Nairobi. Unlike other world conferences held in the 1990s, the focus of preparations for Beijing was at the regional level. Five regional conferences were held, in Indonesia, Argentina, Austria, Senegal, and Jordan, focusing on the specific priorities in each region. This process helped Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, in particular, to work as strong regional groups in Beijing.

In March, 1995, at the annual session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the draft Platform for Action, compiled by the Conference Secretariat from the five regional conferences, was negotiated for the first time. With only this one chance to negotiate a document never seen in its entirety, the deliberations were tense. This mood was exacerbated by what were widely understood to be deliberate "blocking" tactics by delegations opposed to a constructive agreement on women's equality. Furthermore, many delegations were ill-prepared to negotiate and the Conference Secretariat was afraid of potential controversy. As a result, the draft Platform for Action emerged from the four week preparatory committee process with more than a third of its text unresolved. Among the concepts bracketed were "gender" and the "human rights of women."

Over the summer, a contact group convened to resolve the use of the word "gender" and informal negotiations were held in early August to remove some of the more redundant brackets. Apparently unsettled by the chaos of the preparatory process during the Commission on the Status of Women, diplomats in August tried to bring some order to negotiations, both in terms of process and tone. They were successful.


Indications of a Tide Turned

In the first few days of the official conference, which opened on September 4, events indicated that the negotiations would be painstakingly slow. But given the fact that most delegations were resolved not to reopen agreements reached in the recent past, it seemed likely that agreements made in Cairo would be fully re-affirmed. The first positive sign was the appointment of an experienced diplomat and skilled negotiator, Merwat Tallawy, Egypt's ambassador to Japan, as chair of the contact group on the health chapter. This task would not be easy. Achieving consensus on health, which included concepts of sexual and reproductive health and rights was expected to be a difficult and intricate process in itself. It was made even more difficult by the need to reconcile relevant language in the other sections of the document on poverty, the girl child, and human rights, as well as the preamble. Tallawy, who had led the Egyptian negotiating team at the ICPD, has years of experience regarding UN rules and procedures from her work on the Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Commission for the Status of Women. Tallaway steered the delegations through the most contentious issues, constantly reminding them that the conference was to achieve consensus by finding language acceptable to the majority of delegations.

After an effort by the Holy See and its few allies to unseat Tallawy had failed, and interventions by some delegations to slow the negotiations down were met with vocal derision by the other delegations, a consensus emerged by the end of the first week. As a result, the Holy See quietly announced that they would not challenge Cairo language. But the tide had not fully turned. Concepts outside, but related to, the specific language agreed in Cairo were challenged repeatedly not only by the Holy See but also by conservative delegations from Islamic states. Nonetheless, when language was agreed upon stating that "the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility, is basic to their empowerment," (Platform, Para. 94), it seemed clear that moving beyond Cairo was possible. That such a controversial statement, unattainable one year earlier, was possible in the first week suggested that the majority of delegates to Beijing were determined to secure agreements on women's empowerment. In essence, the mood in Beijing conference rooms was much different from the mood in the conference rooms in Cairo.


The Pattern of Diplomacy

Some threads of the pattern of diplomacy in Beijing were recognizable from Cairo, but they were overlaid with a more balanced global interplay with all regions of the world taking a significant role.

In Cairo, the negotiations were marked by the new assertiveness of the US under the Clinton Administration, a much hyped Holy axis of the Holy See and Iran, South Africa's first UN conference since its re-emergence onto the international scene, the decision by the Group of 77 to only operate as a block on economic issues-the group's original mandate-and the tentacles of the Holy See stretching from Malta to a rump of countries in Central and Latin America and West Africa.

In Beijing, the pattern of diplomacy included the emergence of Africa as a coordinated region and the strong voices of Senegal, Namibia, and Zambia, as well as South Africa. This was essential in reaching consensus on the sections on health, poverty, the girl child, and human rights. This coordinated African voice had been strengthened through the process of regional preparations which included a regional preparatory conference, regional ministerial meetings, sub-regional meetings, and a meeting sponsored by the Organization of African Unity. Also for the first time, representatives of African women's movements were represented on multiple delegations, and delegations spoke out with confidence on issues from which their diplomats had previously shied away.

Northern countries paid a price for approaching the conference as if it were only about the quality of women's lives in the South, and about the responsibility--or lack of responsibility--of the North for that quality of life. Most Northern delegations did not wish to discuss situations of inequality in their own countries, between women and men or between the wealthy and the poor.

The European Union (EU), now with a common position of 15 countries, did create political space for consensus by staking out strong positions in many areas, including sexual rights. However, other delegations and NGOs expressed frustration as the EU failed to develop a strategy to negotiate its positions, even as consensus was being built around language on women's rights to control their sexuality that was included in the Platform for Action. The fragile consensus on sexual rights that stretched from Iran to Norway nearly broke under the strain of the pressure within the EU for inclusion of the phrase "sexual rights." The same lack of negotiating skill held up other debates. But, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and Australia often found a way out, toward consensus, as the core of the JUSCANZ alliance.

In contrast to Cairo, at Beijing the US delegation played a low-key role in the negotiations. Silent at critical moments due to fear of domestic lobbies of the Christian right, the US delegation was uncomfortable being visibly in the lead on issues central to the Cairo consensus. However, echoing the First Lady's adoption of the women's rights community's phrase "women's rights are human rights," the US fought to defend the language of the 1993 Vienna conference in the human rights section.

Much has been said about the "unholy alliance" forged in both Cairo and Beijing between conservative forces of different fundamentalist religious standpoints. In Cairo, the alliance broke down as it became apparent that the motivations and concerns of each side of the alliance were different, and as the Holy See and Iran shrank from public association. In Beijing, a smaller core of countries associated themselves with each other much more visibly. Scripted and coordinated as a grouping that was fundamentalist in its approach, Sudan, Yemen, Malta and the Holy See were the only reliable members of such an alliance.

Opposition to the empowerment of women, expressed most vocally in negotiations on equal inheritance rights, sexual rights, and reproductive and sexual health, came from a diminished Catholic conservative bloc (much smaller and less united than in Cairo), and from conservative Islamic countries that were more vociferous than in Cairo. At times, these two blocs worked together, but were countered by the unfettered voices of many Latin American countries, including Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. For the first time in such a conference, the Organization of Islamic States acted as a country grouping to coordinate positions. This task proved difficult as secular Muslim countries, like Bangladesh and Indonesia, conservative fundamentalist states, including Sudan and Yemen, and deal makers, such as Iran and Egypt, struggled to reach and maintain unified positions.


What Was Achieved

The key tenets established in the Beijing Platform for Action are:

In the Conference's last negotiating session, an impassioned and unprecedented debate on sexual orientation took place. This debate ranged from outright denunciations of homosexuals and lesbians as deviant, to strong pleas to end discrimination in all its forms. A particularly eloquent and resonant statement was made by South African Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma when she assured the world that South Africa would not discriminate against anyone, no matter what his or her sexual orientation, and that the nation supported retaining the language on sexual orientation to show that South Africa has no short memory on how it feels to be discriminated against. However, despite the support of the majority of the delegations who took the floor to retain specific references to disallowing discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation," it was ultimately stricken from the Platform for Action as part of an intricate bargain to achieve consensus on the document as a whole.

At the final plenary session of the Conference, more than 40 countries added interpretive statements or expressed reservations to specific passages of the Platform. Many other countries took the floor to express their "unqualified support" for the Platform, including Bolivia, El Salvador, Panama, India, and South Africa. In Cairo, 17 reservations and interpretive statements were made on multiple sections of the Programme of Action. By contrast, in Beijing, the majority of the 28 reservations and interpretive statements focused specifically on two of the 362 paragraphs comprising the Platform for Action: paragraph 96 (which establishes a woman's right to control her own sexuality) and paragraph 106k (which calls for countries to consider reviewing abortion laws that punish women who have had illegal abortions). The Holy See, as expected, expressed a reservation on the entire health chapter and additional paragraphs, but eventually joined the overall consensus. The reservations expressed were narrowly defined and, as such, do not undermine the value of the 125-page long Platform.


What It Means

To a great extent, the final consensus was due to the new dialogue witnessed in the negotiating rooms. More countries were represented than at previous conferences by women. As was not often the case in the past, these women were not tokens-there because of whom they married. In Beijing, women served as delegates because they were professionals, experts, elected officials, activists, and leaders of women's organizations. Many of them have backgrounds in women's movements, nurtured by the UN Decade for Women (1975-85), and the three previous women's conferences. Many of these women had participated, as government delegates or NGO observers in previous global conferences, and therefore were skilled in the process and substance of U.N. negotiations. Without question, their expertise and experience were critical to the outcomes of the conference.

The overall messages from this conference to the world are: First, equality is not for debate; it is desired, essential, and will come about. Second, 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. Third, the vision of population and development adopted in Cairo is truly global policy. And fourth, women's rights are human rights. Governments and non-governmental organizations must now deliver, and the women of the world, working in partnership with men, will hold them accountable.

What Beijing showed is that change can come about through intense collaboration, discipline, and a shared purpose. That change may not be immediately visible, especially heroic, or particularly sweeping. Still, it is hard to believe that the Beijing agreements will not have an impact. Such a diverse assembly will effect change, large and small, in public and private arenas. Positive energy pervaded the negotiations in Beijing-an intensely political conference about women's lives-and the first of the women's conferences not to be mired in other geo-political struggles. This energy will be kept alive by NGOs, as they press for realization of the commitments made not just in Rio, Vienna, Giro, and Copenhagen, but those remade and extended in Beijing.


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