ACTION PLAN TO ELEVATE WOMEN GETS MIXED RESULTS

by Thalif Deen

United Nations, 6 Mar 2000 (IPS) -- A widely-publicized five-year-old UN action plan to improve the status of women - and ensure parity between the sexes - has got mixed results worldwide.

Assistant Secretary-General Angela King, the UN's Special Adviser on Gender Issues, asserts there has been "significant progress" in implementing the Platform of Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. As evidence, she points out that there have been positive responses from 142 of the 188 member states, 116 of which produced national action plans for women.

"Yet", she complains, "no country has fully implemented the recommendations of Beijing or fully achieved de facto equality for women and men." King says that some countries have even experienced a reversal of some of the gains made by women - primarily because of unforeseen events, including armed conflicts, economic crises and natural disasters.

The gloomy assessment comes at a time when the UN will be celebrating the First International Women's Day of the New Millennium on March 8.

The centerpiece of the celebration will be the exchange of experiences of women who are making a difference in resolving conflicts in many regions of the world.

One of the 12 critical areas of concern in the Beijing Platform of Action was women and armed conflicts. Other areas listed include: women and poverty; human rights and women; women and health; education and training of women; women and the economy; women in power and decision- making; institutional mechanisms for the improvement of women; women and media; women and the environment; and the girl child.

But most countries, particularly the 133 developing nations, have complained that their plans to implement the Platform of Action have been thwarted by several extraneous factors, including rising debts, declining aid, widespread poverty and the increasing devastation caused by civil wars and Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

As a result of these concerns, the General Assembly is holding a Special Session - dubbed "Beijing-Plus-Five" -to review the progress made by women since 1995.

Scheduled to take place in New York June 5-9, the Special Session not only seeks to strengthen the commitments made in Beijing but is also looking for new ways of moving forward in implementing the Platform of Action.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette said last week that many had expressed concern about the relatively limited progress accomplished since the Beijing conference.

"Everyone would have preferred more in-depth change to occur. And that is precisely the reason for the Special Session - to determine how to go farther down the road that had been delineated at Beijing towards true gender equality worldwide," she said.

Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said it was important to note that events over the last decade had shown that the concerns of gender equality could not be limited to women alone, but must also expand to the roles of men.

"Actions and initiatives of the international community must impact both men and women. And that was at the heart of the idea of mainstreaming, which had been the major theme of Beijing," he said.

In a report on the Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that the decade of the 1990s was characterized by profound political, social and economic changes that have harmed women and impeded efforts to implement the recommendations of the Beijing conference.

These challenges include: conflict and human displacement; economic instability and change; institutional discrimination; the persistence of gender stereotypes; the absence of targets, data and monitoring mechanisms; and the shortage of financial and technical resources.

On Friday, the UN Commission on the Status of Women began a two- week long session - scheduled to conclude March 17 - to make preparations for the Special Session.

Addressing the Commission Friday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was glad that the first International Women's Day of the 21st century is being devoted to the theme of women uniting for peace.

The century that has just closed, he said, saw the age of large inter-state wars reach its apex and wane, only to be replaced by the age of ethnic conflicts. Civilians have become the main targets of today's wars, he argued, "and women bear more than their fair share of the burden." "But women, who know the price of conflict so well, are also often better equipped then men to prevent or resolve it," Annan said.

The Secretary-General pointed out that the Beijing conference called for women and their human rights to be protected in conflict situations.

"It called for women to play a bigger part in the decisions which resolve conflict, and for more conflicts to be resolved in non-violent ways," he added. (SUNS4622)

The above article by the Inter Press Service appeared in the South- North Development Monitor (SUNS) .