Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-14-Speech-3-162"
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"en.20000614.7.3-162"2
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"Mr President, I am grateful for this opportunity to tell you about the work carried out at the special UN conference assessing the 1995 Beijing Conference and its Action Platform. The Beijing Conference was extremely important in terms of recognising women’s rights and approving an Action Platform endorsed by 189 countries. It established the content of these rights and approved instruments allowing these rights to be gradually consolidated. As usually happens with this type of international instrument, it became necessary to assess this given that five years had passed since it was signed.
This assessment was carried out over many sessions with preparatory meetings initially being held within a PropCom. These sessions made slow and sometimes difficult progress in terms of agreeing on certain aspects on which one group of countries, particularly those which are usually regarded as the most developed, considered that progress should be made. There were also some problems in terms of resistance to the language used, not in the political declaration which was approved earlier, but in the final document which was composed of four parts. One of these parts concerned the measures and policies to be approved by governments in order to consolidate not only the Beijing Platform but also everything which has been achieved by the various countries in the meantime.
This process was relatively complex as alliances were established between certain countries, particularly from the European Union, and the South American countries with the result that the G77 broke up at a certain point. This prevented the work from being carried out at a quicker pace.
Anyway, to summarise as quickly as possible, important progress was made in recognising women’s rights as human rights. Very positive political statements were made in terms of rejecting any violations of these human rights, eradicating all practices which violate human rights, referring to the Commission on the Status of Women and the optional protocol and combating racism and violence based on racial grounds. On the issue of violence against women, the satisfactory progress made included the agreement achieved on combating trafficking through international cooperation, with support for actions which are being developed at other levels in the international arena, and also the acceptance by all countries of public campaigns against violence based on the campaign instigated by the European Union on zero tolerance. Also discussed were the issues of poverty eradication policies, work as a factor in ensuring the economic participation of women, the essential need to adopt policies reconciling family and professional life and the need to develop access for women to education and training as a basic instrument in guaranteeing them independence. There was also, for the first time, a more positive reference to issues of maternity and paternity, usually associated with the male role, and the need for job-sharing.
On health, the need was noted for a holistic approach in terms of sexual rights and not just in the area of reproductive health. Special references were introduced, also on the EU’s initiative, to handicapped migrant women, elderly women and native women. The role of men was adequately emphasised, as also was the need to reinforce the participation of women in building increasingly peaceful societies. Also addressed was the introduction of an issue which was one of the fundamental instruments in the Beijing Platform, namely mainstreaming from the gender perspective. This must be included in all mechanisms on human rights, in the UN Treaties and at the Millennium Summit and represents an extremely important achievement.
As for the methodologies for assessing the progress made by countries in applying their commitments, positive references were also made to measurable and well-established objectives resulting in the type of monitoring which allows a more objective balance to be produced, at any time, than that achieved to date. Discussions were also held on reinforcing the role of non-governmental organisations in conducting all the policies and as privileged partners of the State in ensuring that the Platform is implemented. The basic problems concerned what the European Union has already included in Article 13 of the EC Treaty and the difficulty which some countries had in accepting the issue of sexual rights and its inherent diversity and the issue of sexual orientation.
In this context, and continuing the strategy defined at EU level of considering that this special conference was not a new conference but an intermediate phase, it was considered that, on these more delicate aspects, the language of Beijing should be used again. The EU took the decision to make a final declaration in which it reaffirmed the progress achieved and its intention to continue fighting to ensure that what for us is already a commitment, given the very constitution of the European Union and specifically Article 13, can be enshrined in future instruments."@en1
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