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Committee on Women Fourth Session Beirut, 21-23 October 2009

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Committee on Women Fourth Session Beirut, 21-23 October 2009 UNITED NATIONS E Distr. LIMITED E/ESCWA/ECW/2009/IG.1/3 3 November 2009 Economic and Social Council League of Arab States ENGLISH ORIGINAL: ARABIC Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) Committee on Women Fourth session Beirut, 21-23 October 2009 CONSOLIDATED ARAB REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION: +15 Summary Fifteen years after the fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 4-15 September 1995) and the Beijing Platform for Action, which specified twelve critical areas of concern aimed at achieving the advancement of women and gender equality, a process of reviewing and evaluating the progress made in its implementation is currently under way in order to identify the obstacles and challenges that are still hindering the advancement of women and their equality with men at national, regional and international levels. Within that context, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is set to hold its fifty-fourth session in New York from 1 to 12 March 2010, where the progress made in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action will be evaluated along with the results of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly (New York, 5-9 June 2000), entitled “Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace in the Twenty-first Century”. The session issued a declaration with additional procedures and initiatives aimed at implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. In addition to the twelve critical areas of concern, procedures and initiatives specified in the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, ESCWA underscored those priorities that were defined by the Arab Plan of Action for the Advancement of Women to the Year 2005 and that were issued in 1995 by the Council of Arab Ministers for Social Affairs in the League of Arab States. In preparation for the presentation and evaluation process, the United Nations along with its five regional committees prepared a questionnaire addressed to governments on the follow-up to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. ESCWA collected the answers to the questionnaire from 17 Arab countries and, based on these, worked in cooperation with the League of Arab States on preparing this consolidated report, which is hereby presented to the Committee on Women in its fourth session for adoption. 09-0365 E/ESCWA/ECW/2009/IG.1/3 CONTENTS Paragraphs Page Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1-6 3 Chapter I. OVERVIEW OF ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES IN ENHANCING GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWERING WOMEN.... 7-28 4 A. Main achievements........................................................................................ 8-20 4 B. Obstacles and challenges ............................................................................... 21-28 6 II. PROGRESS MADE ON THE BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION AND AS PER THE OUTCOME DOCUMENT OF THE TWENTY- THIRD SPECIAL SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ................. 29-94 8 A. Burden of poverty on women ........................................................................ 30-36 8 B. Women’s education and training ................................................................... 37-42 9 C. Women and health ......................................................................................... 43-48 10 D. Violence against women................................................................................ 49-58 11 E. Women and armed conflicts .......................................................................... 59-61 13 F. Women and the economy............................................................................... 62-70 14 G. Women in authority and decision-making..................................................... 71-75 15 H. Women’s human rights.................................................................................. 76-81 16 I. Women and the media ................................................................................... 82-85 17 J. Women and the environment......................................................................... 86-90 17 K. Girls’ rights.................................................................................................... 91-94 18 III. INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS........................................................... 95-108 19 A. Women’s national mechanisms ..................................................................... 95-102 19 B. Obstacles and challenges faced by women’s national mechanisms............... 103-108 21 IV. MAIN CHALLENGES AND PLANS FOR CONFRONTING THEM......... 109-118 22 A. Negative cultural traditions and legislative gaps ........................................... 110-112 22 B. Poverty and its impact on the economic participation of women .................. 113-114 23 C. Low rate of women’s participation in decision-making ................................ 115-116 24 D. Weak monitoring, follow-up and coordination mechanisms and tools.......... 117-118 24 2 E/ESCWA/ECW/2009/IG.1/3 Introduction 1. This constitutes the third regional report since the Fourth World Convention on Women (Beijing, 4-15 September 1995) aimed at reviewing and evaluating the progress made in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action in terms of assessing the achievements realized with regard to the gender equality, empowering women, highlighting current obstacles and challenges, defining appropriate strategies to put an end to obstacles, and achieving the advancement of women and equality in all countries. The report is presented every five years shedding light on developments during this period of time. 2. This report, which was prepared through the cooperation between ESCWA Centre for Women and the Women Department within the General Secretariat of the League of Arab States (LAS), is based on national reports issued by 17 countries. ESCWA co-organized, along with the General Secretariat of LAS, the regional office of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the Arab Women Organization and the Centre of Arab Women for Training and Research, a training session for Arab countries aimed at preparing national reports on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, which was held in the General Secretariat Headquarters of LAS in March 2009. 3. National reports were prepared based on the questionnaire addressed by the United Nations to governments as a basis for their reports and in order to define implemented achievements, gaps and current challenges. The questionnaire also highlighted fields in terms of procedures and initiatives that were most pressing for follow-up to the implementation. The countries and territories that prepared national reports were as follows: Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Syrian Arab Republic, Djibouti, Sudan, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania and Yemen. Countries that did not prepare related reports included Comoros, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Somalia, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In view of the women status in Iraq due to conflicts stretching over several decades, other information on the status of Iraqi women were collected from other recent reports and included in this report. 4. The Arab region comprises three categories of countries, namely: high-income countries, middle- income countries and low-income countries. High-income countries as well as some of the middle-income countries succeeded in providing many fundamental services to women, such as health, education, shelter and micro-loans, which led to a noticeable improvement on both women education and health levels, compared to low-income countries. However, all three categories still face common challenges regarding the status of women, namely, limited economic and political participation of women as well as violence against them. 5. This report comprises four chapters as follows: (a) chapter I reviews the achievements and main obstacles faced by countries during the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, and the outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly; (b) chapter II exposes specific examples of progress made in each of the critical areas of concern defined in the Beijing Platform for Action, while pointing to areas necessitating the adoption of other procedures and initiatives as well as defining obstacles and gaps still hindering the implementation of such areas; (c) chapter III presents information on the national mechanisms on the advancement of women; and (d) chapter IV reviews the challenges and obstacles still hindering the implementation, as well as the plans of action defined by countries to stand up to the challenges and accelerate in the full implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly over the next five years. 6. The report centres on the achievements realized during the past five years in terms of accomplishing gender equality and relies as much as possible on analysing the presented statistics. In addition to national responses to the questionnaire, the report also made use of regional and national reports, such as the Human Development Report 2009, follow-up to the declaration of the Istanbul Report, implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report, as well as reports prepared by countries on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of
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