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The Commonwealth Secretariat
and
the United Nations Information Center, London
Panel Discussion
on
"Progress for Women in the New Millennium:
the Way Forward"
Keynote speech
on
"The Global Perspective: Outcomes of Beijing+5
Gender Equality, Development and Peace"
by
Angela E.V. King
Assistant Secretary-General
Special Adviser on Gender Issues and
Advancement of Women
4 December 2000
Distinguished Chairpersons,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Distinguished Panellists,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am deeply honoured to have this opportunity to be with you today and to participate in the discussion on "Progress for Women in the New Millennium: the Way Forward". At the outset, I would like to thank you, Mr. Secretary-General, Nancy Spence and Tina Micklethwaite of the United Nations Information Centre and other organizers of the Panel discussion for the invitation and warm hospitality.
The Commonwealth has found ways of cooperating amongst its 54 Members for the common good by building on the positive aspects of shared attributes such as a language, history and similar educational and government traditions. The Commonwealth is now in the unique position of enabling one quarter of the world's people to feel connected to each other.
As the Special Adviser of the United Nations Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women and as a citizen of one of your Member States, I feel part of this process and am particularly pleased to address such a diversified audience as yours.
The Commonwealth is well known beyond its borders for its strong stand on gender issues and support of the United Nations gender equality goals. The Commonwealth Heads of Government set the advancement of women as "a particular Commonwealth challenge" at their meeting in South Africa in November 1999. The 1995 Commonwealth Plan of Action drawn up in connection with the Beijing World Conference is a testimony of political commitment to gender at the highest level. By reiterating its strong support for United Nations goals in gender mainstreaming, women's rights, women's participation in peace and political processes and monitoring economic impact on women, the Sixth Commonwealth Meeting of Ministers responsible for Women's Affairs held in New Delhi from 16 to 20 April 2000 in which I had the honour to participate, was a further step in implementing the twelve critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action.
It is a matter of record that within the United Nations, over the last decade, gender issues have become increasingly the focus of international attention linking the advancement of women to the effective solution of today's global problems - globalization and poverty, conflict, illiteracy, HIV/AIDS, violence against women and the gender gap in Information Communication Technologies.
The main legislative bodies of the United Nations, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, and its functional body - the Commission on the Status of Women and others have developed new gender sensitive policies and approaches and have taken on an important role in the follow-up to the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women and the special session of the General Assembly on Beijing+5:"Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace in the Twenty-First Century."
Other special sessions of the General Assembly on drugs, population and social development have increasingly addressed the concerns of women within given sectoral issues. The links between population and development and women's equality, for example, have been established. We now recognize the need for further efforts to ensure women's full and equal participation in decision-making.
What did the special session of the General Assembly on
Beijing+5 held in June 2000 do? It reaffirmed the Platform for Action as the
blueprint for women's equality, while at the same time strengthened and updated
it in many areas. It gave us an opportunity to assess how far we have come, to
make new commitments, tackle the obstacles and face new challenges, so that we
can then move ahead with renewed energy to achieve our goal of women's equality
and empowerment in all walks of life. It proposed concrete actions for a diverse
range of actors to ensure full implementation of the Platform, thereby leading
His Excellency Minister Gurirab of Namibia, the President of the Assembly, to
suggest in his closing statement to the session that "If Governments
demonstrate the necessary political will, and allocate the human and financial
resources required, the goals of gender equality, development and peace will
become a reality very early in the twenty-first century".
Achievements
A few examples at the global and Commonwealth level highlight this optimistic assessment. Let me start with the area of women's human rights. In the period since the Beijing Conference, 18 more States became party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Women's Bill of Rights with the latest Saudi Arabia, which ratified during the Millennium Summit, bringing the total number of States parties to 166. One of the actions agreed at Beijing to be taken by Governments was support for an optional protocol to the Convention on a individual women's right to petition the CEDAW committee after exhausting all natural remedies. Less than 2 weeks away on 22 December 2000 the Optional Protocol to the Convention - now ratified by 12 States and signed by 62 - will enter into force. In our preparations for this historic event, last week, in Berlin we had a most productive discussion with the CEDAW Committee on the communications and inquiry procedures relating to the implementation of the Optional Protocol. It is my hope that Commenwealth Countries will sign and ratify this Protocol as early as possible to enable women in your Countries to have access to new forms of redress. As you are aware several members of the Commonwealth including Ghana, New Zealand, St Kitts & Nevis, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh serve on this Committee.
The special session confirmed that at the global level Governments, the United Nations system and civil society in the follow up to the Fourth World Conference on Women have achieved much. Governments have taken steps to ensure that the realities of women's lives are more explicitly addressed in planning and policy-making to eradicate poverty. Member States have enacted legislation to comply with human rights and international labour conventions that promote women's economic rights, equal access to economic resources and equality in employment. Significant steps have been taken to achieve progress in girls education and training at all levels, especially where there was sufficient political commitment and resource allocation. Steps have been taken to improve women's access to health care, including reduction in maternal mortality and introduction of a gender perspective into health care, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and greater attention to mental health, occupational hazards and environmental health. Most States emphasized eradication of violence particularly domestic violence as a national priority area in national crime prevention strategies.
Significant efforts to address acts of violence against women during armed conflicts have been made. The statutes and rules of the International Tribunals on the Former Yugoslavia, on Rwanda and on Sierra Leone, and of the Statute of the International Criminal Court reflect this effort, and the first perpetrators have been brought to justice. Provisions guaranteeing the enjoyment of human rights without discrimination on the basis of sex have been included in many Constitutions. Steps have been taken to enact and revise national legislation, including on sexual assault, stalking (UK) harassment and trafficking (EU) to bring it in line with the CEDAW Convention, other international instruments and demands of the Beijing Platform for Action. Women's access to legal remedies often through legal clinics organized by NGOs, such as in India, improved at the national and international levels.
A number of countries including those of the Commonwealth have also increased the use of targets and indicators and of special strategies including quotas to increase the participation of women in decision-making until parity is achieved at national, local and community levels.
New targets were also set in the Outcome Document of Beijing+5. These are:
- Closure of the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005, and ensuring free compulsory and universal primary education for both girls and boys by 2015;
- The achievement of a 50 per cent improvement in the levels of adult literacy by 2015;
- The review of legislation with a view to removing discriminatory provisions as soon as possible, preferably by 2005;
- Universal access to high quality primary health care throughout the life cycle, including sexual and reproductive health care, not later than 2015;
- The goal of 50/50 gender balance in all posts in the organizations of the United Nations system, including at the Professional level and above.
We would hope to have full Commonwealth support in meeting these targets by the next review in 2005.
Distinguished Chairpersons,
Our satisfaction with progress should not distract our attention from the many formidable challenges that remain.
Today, I wish to address seven of these challenges, and consider the way forward to ensure that the United Nations and the Commonwealth can make a real difference to women's lives.
May I start with the challenge of globalization as our world's dominant trend. It has productive forces, but at the same time globalization can have negative effects, and has the potential to add to inequalities both between countries and within countries. Critical in ensuring that globalization is a positive force, is the integration of broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and strategies to ensure that all the world's people, women and men, share the benefits of globalization. The need to manage the globalization process to ensure that women do not bear the brunt of the impact of its negative effects is perhaps our primary challenge in the period beyond Beijing+5.
A further challenge is widening poverty. World Bank estimates suggest that the number of people who live on 1 dollar a day is 1.5 billion. That this number will reach 1.9 billion by 2015. The majority of these are women and recent research led by Diane Elson appearing in UNIFEM's Progress of the World's Women indicate that many factors have contributed to the widening economic inequality between women and men. Without reducing women's poverty our work towards alleviating and eliminating poverty will be flawed. The Debt cancellation and 0.7% ODA goals must be met.
The escalation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the developing world constitutes a third critical challenge. AIDS is now the number one killer in many of our Commonwealth countries in Africa, with 24.5 million adults and children being affected by this deadly disease. HIV/AIDS threatens the survival of entire nations in the region, and has had a disproportionate impact on women. By the end of this year 13 million more women will be affected and a further 4 million will have died. To date, it has claimed the lives of 2 million people, 10 times the number that have been killed as a result of recent conflicts throughout Africa. Its results have not only decimated populations but are threatening to wipe out growth rates and the quality of life indicators.
To confront this pandemic we need a new approach: one that combines the promotion of basic education on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and one which provides full, equal and affordable access to primary health care. During the Millennium Summit, Dr. Peter Piot, the Head of UNAIDS called on 70 First Ladies to speak out against the stigma surrounding the disease and to publicize strategies to confront it.
A fourth challenge includes gender-based violence against women which persists and deepens in most countries of the world. The recent UNICEF report, Domestic Violence against Women, estimates that 20 to 50 per cent of women everywhere have experienced domestic violence. A stark picture is painted in UNFPA's The State of the World's Population 2000, which reports on sex-selective abortions, female infanticide and neglect leading to the absence of 60 million girls who would otherwise be alive, as well as an increase in the incidence of sexual violence, early and forced marriages, female genital mutilation, where there are 130 million women and girls who have been victims, dowry deaths and so called honour killings and crimes of passion. I am pleased to report that on 6 November the General Assembly adopted for the first time in UN history a strong resolution on honour crimes and crimes of passion (A/C.3/2000/L.13/Rev.1), which are also singled out in the Secretary-General's message on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 25 November last.
In the past decade, the traditional subjects of illegal smuggling - drugs, guns and endangered species - have expanded to include human beings - I speak of the fifth challenge - the spread of illegal trafficking in women and girls now on Europe exceeding that of drugs. The International Centre for Migration Policy Development in Vienna conservatively estimates the number of people each year smuggled into the European Union alone as being 400,000. Of these, the majority are women and girls, usually in their teens or early twenties. As the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Radika Coomeraswany has emphasized, there is a clear link between poverty and this trade. Many are lured with false promises of employment and end up trapped in unacceptable conditions of sexual slavery or forced labour.
The issue of illegal trafficking has moved rapidly up the international agenda. One of the protocols to the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime is the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Human Persons, especially Women and Children. It was adopted on 15 November by the General Assembly in resolution A/55/25. Commonwealth countries should sign and ratify this important Convention and Protocol as soon as possible.
A sixth challenge is to advance the political empowerment of women. Today we should focus not on what we know -- that women are poorly represented at higher levels of decision-making -- but on what we can do about it. In January 2000, an average proportion of women in Commonwealth parliaments was 13.4 per cent, slightly less than one per cent higher than the global average of 12.9. Women also accounted for 10.5 per cent of cabinet, ministerial and sub-ministerial offices. These percentages still fall short of the 30 per cent target set by the Commonwealth Ministers Responsible for Women's Affairs in 1996 with the exception of South Africa and a few others and of the United Nations goal of 50/50% women and men in all posts including at the higher levels. Here I may report that in the UN Secretariat, where women have 30% of higher level posts, the Commonwealth has its share of women starting with the first Deputy Secretary-General, Ms. Louise Fechette and the heads of UNFPA, Habitat, Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, Human Resources, UNIFEM, in addition to my post. I would hope that this Secretariat is following closely behind.
At the national level, we see this "deficit of democracy in the number of heads of State and Government who are women. Of the 146 Heads of State and Government who attended the Millennium Summit only four were women: Finland, Latvia and two, Sheik Hassina and Helen Clark from the Commonwealth countries of Bangladesh and New Zealand.
Perhaps the most insidious barrier to women's equal participation in decision-making and leadership is the persistence of stereotypical attitudes towards the gender roles of women and men which create a pervasive climate of discrimination and entrenched stereotypical ideas relating to the role of women in public life.
Distinguished Chairpersons,
A final and seventh challenge is to establish women's role in peace and security. On International Women's Day, 8 March 2000, the President of the Security Council, the Ambassador of Bangladesh, issued a statement on behalf of the Council representing a quantum leap forward. Members of the Security Council for the first time recognized women's role in dealing with armed conflict.
Under the Presidency of Namibia, another Commonwealth country, there then followed the historic open debate in the Security Council on 24 and 25 October 2000 on women, peace and security. The Council reaffirmed that equal participation of women and their full involvement in all efforts for the prevention and resolution of conflicts are essential for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. It further built on the Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Plan of Action on Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations adopted on 31 May 2000.
Fifty-five years after the inception of the United Nations, the Security Council adopted resolution 1325 on 31 October following the earlier debate stressing the importance of women's equal participation with men and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security, and the need to increase their role in decision-making in conflict prevention and resolution. It urged Member States to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making level in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict. The Council called on all actors involved, when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, to adopt a gender perspective. It also emphasized the responsibility of all States to put an end to impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes including those relating to sexual violence against women and girls, and stresses the need to exclude these crimes, from amnesty provisions. In this connection, I would like to pay special tribute to the work done by Canada and the UK in preparing with the Lester Pearson Institute a gender sensitive training package for peacekeepers which is now being adapted to the United Nations use, in consultation with my Office.
To achieve the United Nations new approach to global problems through a gender lens, all countries whether Members of the Commonwealth or regional groups, need to work closely with the United Nations to maintain the momentum created by the special session of the General Assembly on Beijing+5, the open meeting of the Security Council in October 2000 and the Millennium Summit, and to consider practical strategies which will accelerate implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Beijing+5 Outcome.
In particular, I would like to suggest that the Commonwealth High Level Review Group take up gender equality as one of priorities for the 2001 Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane, Australia. I would like also to encourage the Commonwealth to continue to work with us in the United Nations on gender mainstreaming, gender budgeting and strengthening national machineries, given your excellent experience in this area. And above all getting the CEDAW Convention and its Optional Protocol signed and ratified by all Commonwealth States.
We started this century with a special session of the General Assembly on the advancement and empowerment of women. Let us strive to make this twenty-first century the century which translates women's de jure equality with men in political participation and leadership into that where women and men equally enjoy these rights de facto.
Thank you Distinguished Chairpersons and best wishes for the success of this discussion and for the future collaboration of our two Secretariats in achieving gender equality goals early in this new millennium.
