FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WOMEN June 95

When Noerine Kaleeba's husband Chris lay dying of AIDS in a London hospital bed, his great wish was to spend his last days in their native Uganda. Mrs. Kaleeba did take her husband home and he died surrounded by his family. But other than family support, ganda could provide little help or comfort to the Kaleebas.

At the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo last year, governments acknowledged that dealing with sexual and reproductive health problems such as AIDS, are, along with family planning services, crucial to stabilizing world popultion. It was agreed that $17 billion a year is required to support such programs, with a third of that amount coming from the rich countries.

Earlier this year, at the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen, consensus was reached on a "20/20" principle--rich countries would set aside 20 percent of their development aid and developing countries 20 percent of their national budgets for asic human needs, including primary education, health care, sanitation and clean water, nutrition, and family planning.

In recent decades, women have been fighting to win equal rights and fair treatment. Access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health services has been central to that fight. Progress has been made but the advances have been slow and spotty.

Now, another opportunity to empower women to improve their status and to stimulate governments to support their efforts is approaching. This coming September 4-15, one full year after Cairo, the Fourth World Conference on Women, sponsored by the United Naions will be held in Beijing, China.

So far, however, the commitments made in Cairo and Copenhagen have not yet been honored. The developed countries are lagging badly in their commitments to funding family planning and reproductive health service and have made little effort to provide more oney for basic human needs. Progress in these fields has been slow or non-existent in developing countries.

If national governments can get away with ignoring the obligations they agreed to at the previous conferences, Beijing, could turn out to be just another empty exercise in speech making and posturing. Governments must be required to live up to their promies on these crucial issues.

It's up to NGOs and citizens to make sure they do.

ACTION

Please send the Parliamentary Alert (available by contacting EarthAction), with a short note, to one of your representatives in the national legislature asking that she or he press their governments to act to carry out the agreements made in Cairo and Copenhagen. Specifically,

    * If you live in a rich industrialized country, tell your government it must contribute its fair share to the $17 billion population fund and allocate at least 20 percent of its foreign aid to basic human needs, including primary education, helth care, saitation and clean water, nutrition, and family planning.

    * If you live in a developing country, urge your government to allocate 20 percent of its national budget for these basic human needs.

Beijing could be a major stride forward toward a more just world for women--and for all of humanity. But only if citizens act now. Background Information

FOR A MEANINGFUL WOMEN'S CONFERENCE IN BEIJING PAST PROMISES MUST BE KEPT

By the year 2030 there will be between 7.5 billion and 10 billion people in the world, the vast majority living in what now are called developing countries. Action--or inaction--by the international community today will determine the quality of their live. If people and governments fail to act wisely, our planet will be troubled by a still-exploding human population, large parts of which will suffer poverty, hunger, disease and armed strife. But if decisive action is taken on population, economic equity, ocial justice, human rights and preserving the environment, a relatively secure, stable, secure, prosperous and equitable future is attainable.

In recent years, the United Nations has sponsored a series of high level meetings to confront these problems. One of the most prominent was the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, which sought to deal with demograpic issues in the context of sustainable development. The Cairo conference marked a striking departure from previous meetings dealing with the population problem in that it stressed the need for reproductive and sexual health care, the empowerment of women the role of religion and the family, as well as family planning. Conferees agreed that $17 billion a year needed to be spent on family planning and reproductive health care, with one-third of that cost to be borne by the rich industrial countries. So far however, there has been little movement to allocate resources needed to meet the goals of the conference, particularly by the developed countries.

The World Summit on Social Development, held in Copenhagen this past March, focused on the issues of poverty, unemployment and social disintegration. From that conference emerged an international consensus on the "20/20" principle, under which rich industial countries would devote 20 percent of their development assistance to basic human needs, including primary education, health care, sanitation and clean water, nutrition and family planning and the developing countries would allocate at least 20 percentof their national budgets for such services. While it is very soon after the meeting, there have been few reports of efforts to meet the "20/20" goal.

At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, or "Earth Summit," held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the rich countries, with the exception of the United States, re-affirmed their long-standing but largely unmet commitment to devote 07 percent of the Gross National Product to development assistance in order to help the developing countries achieve environmentally sustainable economic development. But since 1992, development assistance has actually declined by nearly 10 percent. And poitical conditions in the United States, the biggest single contributor to such assistance, suggest it may go down even more sharply.

This coming September 4-15, The Fourth World Conference on Women will be held in Beijing, China. Because of the central role played by women in activities affecting population, the economy, the environment, and the basic functions of civil society all ove the world, the decisions of the previous conferences and the follow-up activities to those conference, have a direct and vital bearing on what happens in Beijing. And the success or failure of the Women's Conference undoubtedly will affect the impact of he previous conferences.

There have been three previous major United Nations conferences on women. The first was held in Mexico City and led the General Assembly declaration of 1975-85 as the Decade of Women. The second, held in Copenhagen in 1980, produced a program of action fo the second half of the decade. The third, in Nairobi in 1985, adopted Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women to the Year 2000.

Despite broad advances in recent decades, women generally still tend to be victims of discrimination and to bear the chief burden of economic and social failures.

--Between one-quarter and one-half of all women are victims of sexual or other physical abuse at some point in their lives.

--On a global average, women receive between 30 and 40 percent less pay than men for the same work. And women receive no pay at all for their daily household work.

--A disproportionately high number of women (and their children) live in poverty. More than half a billion women live in absolute poverty.

--Women are denied equal educational opportunity in many countries. Women account for two-thirds of the world's illiteracy.

--Half a million women, most in the developing countries and nearly a third of them teenagers, die each year in pregnancy.

In the preparatory process for Beijing, Ten "critical areas of concern" were identified in the draft action program prepared for approval by government delegations in September. They are:

1. Enabling women to overcome poverty

2. Ensuring quality education and better health care for women.

3. Eliminating violence against women.

4. Protecting women from armed and other conflicts.
5. Promoting women's economic self-reliance.
6. Promoting women's participation in political decision-making.
7. Integrating gender equality into national policy and planning.
8. Promoting women's human rights.

9. Enhancing media performance in promoting gender equality.
10. Integrating women into the sustainable development process.

A parallel Nongovernmental Organization Forum will be held in Beijing during the conference. Women's groups and other NGOs around the world are now mobilizing for the forum and to place their imprint on the outcome of the formal governmental meeting.

In recent years, NGO participation in and influence on national and international political decisions has been growing. Many NGOs see the Beijing meeting as an important opportunity for maintaining and increasing the momentum. A number of NGOs have been onducting campaigns to call attention to the importance of the meeting and to press for concrete action. For example, the Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) has been coordinating a "180 Days/180 Ways Women's Action Campaign '95" as a call to action to women and men around the world to raise awareness of the plight of women and to build support for improving their lives.

U.N. Conferences such as the recent meetings in Cairo, Copenhagen and Rio and the forthcoming gathering in Beijing can serve to focus the global public on crucial issues affecting the security, health and well-being of the planet and its people. They fore governments to face problems such as population growth, social and economic inequity, and threats to the environment. The bring NGOs together to share views and forge common approaches.

Unless and until governments meet financial, legal and moral commitments made at these meetings, however, the danger grows that they will lead to apathy and cynicism and have no impact on the problems they were called to address. That is the danger facin the Women's Conference in Beijing. And that is why governments must be pressed to honor the promises made in Cairo and Copenhagen.