HOLDING ON TO THE PROMISE Women's Human Rights and the Beijing + 5 Review edited by Cynthia Meillon in collaboration with Charlotte Bunch •< Center for Women's Global Leadership Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey HOLDING ON TO THE PROMISE Women's Human Rights and the Beijing + 5 Review Edited by Cynthia Meillon in collaboration with Charlotte Bunch Center for Women's Global Leadership Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Holding on to the Promise: Women's Human Rights and the Beijing + 5 Review First Printing: May 2001 ISBN: 0-9711412-0-7 ©Center for Women's Global Leadership Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey 160 Ryders Lane New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8555 USA Ph: (1-732)932-8782 Fax: (1-732)932-1180 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.cwgl.rutgers.edu Holding on to the Promise will be distributed by: Women, Ink. 777 United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017 Ph: (1-212)687-8633 Fax: (1-212)661-2704 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.womenink.org Editor: Cynthia Meillon Production Manager: Linda Posluszny Design by Mary Ellen Muzio Printed by Command Web Offset Co. THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY RUTGERS Table of Contents Acknowledgements v Introduction Beijing + 5: Beginning and Ending with Women's Human Rights 2 Cynthia Meillon The Symposium Introduction: Imagine a World 8 Charlotte Bunch Part I: Current Challenges in Women's Human Rights Women 2000: The Future of Human Rights 13 Mary Robinson Women's Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Response to the Globalization Agenda 23 Piedad Cordoba We Want it Paid with Interest! 32 Astna Jahangir The Achievements and Challenges of the Women's Human Rights Movement 37 Florence Butegwa Let's Light Another Candle 44 Abena Busia Part II: Innovative Praxis Section 1: Violence Against Women: New Strategies for Confronting Discrimination and Abuse 46 Silence and Complicity: Unmasking Abuses of Women's Human Rights in the Peruvian Health Care System 49 Ivonne Macassi Confronting Violence Against Women in the Whole of Society ... .54 Duska Andric-Ruzicic Organizing for Sexual Rights: The Namibian Women's Manifesto 60 Elizabeth Khaxas HOLDING ON TO THE PROMISE Redefining and Confronting "Honor Killings" as Femicide 66 Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian The Tokyo Tribunal: Confronting Rape and Sexual Violence as War Crimes 73 Indai Sajor Commentary Challenging Resistance to Women's Human Rights 79 Sunila Abeyesekera Commentary The Only Thing We're Asking for is Implementation 82 Pierre Sane Death Fireworks 85 Bojana Blagojevic Section 2: Women's Economic Rights: Challenging the Structures of Injustice 86 Using CED AW to Fight for Women's Inheritance Rights 89 Sapana Pradhan Malla African Women Refugees in the United Kingdom: Organizing against Oppression 96 Sarah Mukasa Labor Rights with a Feminist Perspective: Organizing with Workers in the Central American Maquila Industry 102 Olga Rivas Poverty in the Midst of Prosperity: Organizing for Economic Rights in the United States 107 Joy Butts Building a Culture of Women's Human Rights in Nigeria 114 Ayesha Imam Breakthrough-Using Popular Culture to Raise Social Awareness 121 Mallika Dutt Commentary Holding Both States and the Private Sector Accountable 123 Pierre Sane Commentary Making the Connections: Using Women's Experiences to Link Human Rights Issues 126 Sunila Abeyesekera Fin de Milenio 129 Claroscuro TABLE OF CONTENTS Beijing + 5 Analysis Taking Stock: Women's Human Rights Five Years After Beijing 132 Charlotte Bunch CED AW and Beijing + 5: Consolidating Women's Human Rights or Backtracking on Commitments? 140 Cynthia Meillon Beijing + 5 and Violence Against Women 147 Lisa Clarke References to Trafficking in the Beijing + 5 Document 156 Cynthia Meillon Beijing + 5: Respecting, Promoting and Protecting Women's Diversities 163 Lisa Clarke and Cynthia Rothschild Women's Economic Rights: A Few Steps Forward and a Long Way to Go 173 elmira Nazombe Liberation 183 Abena Busia Appendix A. The Symposium Program 185 B. Summary of Center for Women's Global Leadership's Beijing + 5 Activities 186 C. Women Prepare for the Beijing + 5 Review 189 D. Working Paper on a Human Rights Based Approach to the Beijing + 5 Review 194 Acknowledgements HERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHOSE TIME, LABOR, analysis and life experiences contributed to the making Tof this book and to the events recorded in it. It is impos- sible to thank them all here. Many of those we would like to recognize are included in the lists on the program for the Sym- posium in the Appendix to this book. We wish to thank especially all of the women, together with their organizations, who provided the testimonies at the Women 2000 Symposium: Joy Butts, Mallika Dutt, Ayesha Imam, Elizabeth Khaxas, Ivonne Macassi, Sapana Pradhan Malla, Sarah Mukasa, Olga Rivas, Nadera Shalhoub- Kevorkian, Duska Andric-Ruzicic, and Indai Sajor. We also wish to thank those who helped to prepare the testimonies and worked with us in other ways that contributed to the success of the symposium, and those who provided additional informa- tion and insights that greatly strengthened the material pre- sented in the book. Among them are: Elena Arengo, Roxanna Carrillo, Shanti Dairiam, Liz Frank, Lynn Freedman, Susana T. Fried, Sandra Lanman, liana Landsberg-Lewis, Debra Liebowitz, Kathy Hall-Martinez, Elsa Stamatapoulou, Erhyu Yuan, and the staff at the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. HOLDING ON TO THE PROMISE We wish to thank all of the Global Center staff, who provided ongoing (and, at times, round-the-clock) support throughout the demanding Beijing + 5 experience: Jewel Daney, elmira Nazombe, Diana Gerace, Lucy Vidal, Lisa Clarke, Mia Roman and Claudia Hinojosa. Most especially, we thank Linda Posluszny, who was both co-producer of the symposium and production man- ager for this book. Cynthia Meillon Charlotte Bunch Editor Executive Director Introduction HOLDING ON TO THE PROMISE Beijing + 5: Beginning and Ending with Women's Human Rights Cynthia Meillon N 1995, DELEGATES FROM 189 COUNTRIES MET IN BEIJING, CHINA to participate in the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. IThe meeting, which is generally referred to as the Beijing Women's Confer- ence, marked over twenty years of activism to win guarantees from govern- ments that concrete measures would at last be taken to put an end to the unequal treatment women face in nearly every country and culture. The confer- ence culminated in consensus agreement on the Beijing Declaration and the Bei- jing Platform for Action. The wording of the Beijing documents was gradually shaped out of lengthy and sometimes contentious negotiations among governments, in which old patterns and traditions of discrimination against women were frequently challenged. Of the two, the Platform for Action (PFA) is by far the most impor- tant; its wording and content clearly reflect the influence of countless women who fought for decades to have discrimination against women officially recog- nized and addressed. The Beijing Platform builds on the work of the three pre- vious world conferences on women (Mexico City, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980; and Nairobi, 1985), but it goes beyond them in asserting women's rights as human rights and in the specificity of commitments to action to ensure respect for women's rights. The results of the Platform for Action have been far reaching. In countries where United Nations treaties and agreements carry the weight of law, women have been able to use the PFA to prod their governments to repeal legislation INTRODUCTION that worked against women. Even before the conference took place, women in some countries used the publicity surrounding Beijing to increase public awareness of women's unequal status in their societies. For a time, "Beijing" became practically a household word, synonymous with women's rights, since the media, for once, had turned its attention to a meeting on women's issues. And in the midst of all the fanfare, something very real was achieved. The Platform for Action is the most comprehensive expression of governments' commitments to human rights for women and girls that has ever been pro- duced. Divided into twelve "critical areas of concern," it identifies the most important sites of discrimination against women and outlines actions for change that are to be taken at the national and international levels. At Beijing, it was decided that governments would meet again in five years' time to evaluate how much progress they had made toward implement- ing the PFA. This evaluation process, which would end with a Special Session of the UN General Assembly in June 2000, came to be known as the Beijing + 5 Review, or B + 5.1 B + 5: Fighting for Implementation In keeping with UN procedure, a formal document was developed for negotia- tion through preparatory sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women. This "Outcomes Document" (as it was called)2 listed achievements and obsta- cles that governments experienced in trying to fulfill the promises they made in the twelve Critical Areas of Concern during the Beijing conference. It also con- tained an extensive set of actions and initiatives that were to be taken in order to improve implementation of the Platform. Many of these "actions" were hotly debated throughout the review process. Women committed to achieving women's full human rights hoped to use Beijing + 5 to push for ways to speed up and strengthen implementation of the PFA. The Center for Women's Global Leadership (Global Center) and its allies planned to use the review as an opportunity to convince governments to com- mit to more concrete goals than were originally set out in the Platform for Action. In the year-and-a-half leading up to the Special Session, women's rights activists from around the world made their way to New York for the interna- tional Preparatory Meetings (PrepComs) and to the regional Beijing + 5 meet- ings that took place in Asia Pacific, Africa, Europe/North America, and Latin America.