Center for Women's Global Leadership
Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)

Beijing +5 Review Process

July 2000

These observations and reflections on the processes for the UN General Assembly Special Session to review implementation of the Beijing Platform (Beijing + 5) held in New York City in June 2000 are offered by our organizations with the intent of learning from this experience that many women found difficult and frustrating at times. This paper is supplemented both by the Linkage Caucus statement issued at the end of the proceedings (available on our websites) and by further analysis of the content of the Outcomes Document to be available soon.

A Special Session of the UN General Assembly, not a UN World Conference.

The Beijing + 5 document being discussed was to review and appraise implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and not to renegotiate it or rewrite it. Thus the discussions at the national and regional level as well as in New York were more technical than at the Fourth World Conference on Women, and less of a referendum on all issues concerning women. As a UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS), this meeting was governed by the rules of the General Assembly (GA) in New York. These rules are more restrictive regarding NGO participation than the rules of world conferences-for example, NGOs are not generally allowed to speak in the GA. Further, government negotiations, up until the final two weeks, were dominated by New York-based missions rather than experts on women's issues from capitals; this meant that on-going GA dynamics and political tensions between governmental blocs-North-South etc.-often dominated the proceedings. Furthermore, the text was being negotiated for several months before UNGASS, and while much of the document remained bracketed, there was very little chance to introduce new language by the time the Session began. As a consequence, NGOs who had been involved in following the negotiations had to stay focused on the document and these final negotiations to protect gains women had made. Yet, there was little opportunity for NGOS who were not active before the session, in their home countries, regional meetings, and/or in New York, to influence the outcome. Perhaps the best such opportunity was for those NGOs who were on governmental delegations.

In addition, few UN or government resources are devoted to special sessions, which are generally held at UN Headquarters in New York, Geneva, or Vienna. Unlike at world conferences, no government is asked to host such special sessions. The U.S. government was therefore not a host country for this event and did not earmark funds for it, unlike China, Kenya, Denmark or Mexico who bid for and were chosen to host the four world conferences on women.

No NGO Forum or Overall Coordinator With Responsibility for NGO Activities.

In the absence of an NGO Forum or a coordinator with overall responsibility for NGO activities, several different bodies emerged to deal with the needs of NGOs. In March 1999 at the first Preparatory Committee for Beijing + 5, a number of sessions were organized by CONGO (Conference of Non-governmental Organizations) and its NY based Committee on the Status of Women with available NGOs, to discuss what should be done. It was emphasized that while there would be some NGO parallel events, the focus of NGO activity should be aimed at affecting the inter-governmental session. This decision was consistent with other "Plus Five" reviews held in New York, including UNCED+5 and ICPD+5, and reflected the sentiment at the time that most participants at such a review would be primarily involved in the official proceedings.

CONGO agreed to convene an NGO International Coordinating Committee to facilitate parallel activities and NGO access to the UN, with representatives of regional groups, global networks and issue caucuses, as well as its Committees on the Status of Women in New York, Geneva, and Vienna. A letter describing this process and inviting participation was sent to NGOS on CONGO'S Beijing mailing list. The Coordinating Committee was established based on responses to this invitation. From September 1999 through June 2000, a small volunteer group of New York-based members of this committee met regularly. At each of the regional meetings to prepare for Beijing + 5, two regional representatives to the committee were selected-by differing methods depending on the region-and were active via E-mail and in New York in March and June.

The committee was primarily responsible for organizing the NGO daily briefings at the Preparatory Committee and at the UNGASS, the NGO Working Session held immediately prior to the UNGASS, and for daily NGO interface with the UN and governments. Much time and energy was spent struggling for better NGO access to the preparatory processes and at the UNGASS itself. Members of the Coordinating Committee met numerous times with staff from the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) to negotiate issues of concern for NGOs, such as accreditation, space for NGO events inside the UN, and NGO speakers in the UNGASS Plenary.

None of us were satisfied with the UN processes adopted for NGO access and especially with the unconscionable way applications for accreditation were handled and the long wait many women endured outside the UN. The Coordinating Committee had warned the UN of these problems, often to no avail. Many of us spent hours trying to make these processes clear and working to get women whose applications were lost by the UN accredited. The NGO Coordinating Committee has written a letter to the UN objecting to how these matters were handled. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the Committee's efforts did prevent even worse proposals, such as the initial plan to limit the number of NGO representatives who could be accredited in June to 1000 with no more than one representative per NGO.

A communications network for Beijing + 5, Womenaction 2000, also emerged out of discussions between women's media networks from every world region at the time of the March'99 preparatory committee. Focusing on the need for the sharing of information within each region, these media groups, in addition to their regular newletters, journals, electronic bulletins (such as IWTC's Women's Globalnet) and broadcasts, developed a strategy that included the construction of regional websites, the facilitating of regional online dialogues, and the production of print materials and radio broadcasts. A global website linked all of these together. Funds were raised by WomenAction to undertake an international training workshop for 40 media women from every world region, who came together in Seoul, Korea to share skills in web-construction, online facilitation, and development of media and communication strategies.

It is estimated that tens of thousands of women were able to be part of Beijing plus Five because of this effort. Additionally, at the Special Session itself, WomenAction undertook two daily newspapers, one with a focus on Africa, that were downloaded daily by regional focal points for distribution at country level. An Internet Café where women could keep in touch with their home regions, webcasts via radio and TV, and a Global Media Project that brought 20 women journalists to New York from every region were also facilitated by WomenAction. Working alongside WomenAction was the Communications Consortium Media Center, who produced daily press releases for the mainstream media, set up interviews for journalists, and kept track of media coverage worldwide. The media outreach from the Special Session was probably the best ever attempted.

Nevertheless, many women arrived in New York expecting another world conference on women and an NGO forum and without having seen any basic information. This raises questions about what further needs to be done, and how to get more support to efforts already being made to disseminate information more broadly, so that women are informed of the nature of the events they attend.

NGO activities abounded in an ad-hoc but somewhat coordinated fashion.

Since there was no NGO Forum office set up, many of the NGO functions for the Special Session were handled as they are during annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meetings. The CONGO office secured all available rooms in the Church Center for the UN and allocated this space based on requests received. DAW retained the right to allocate space within the UN, although they did coordinate this somewhat with the CONGO office. One NGO victory was securing one large UN hall (Conference Room 4) for NGOs for the entire week. Priority allocation of that room went to daily events for NGOS seeking to influence the UN document, the morning briefings, regional caucuses, and the Linkage Caucus at the end of the day. Other events scheduled there were determined by DAW, but priority went to those events sponsored by groupings of NGOS or networks especially from the Global South.

While the UN and Church Center space for NGO activities was more than is usually available at CSW meetings, it became clear that this would not be enough for Beijing +5. The US Host Committee was formed in the fall of 1999 to address the need to provide more activities and facilities for the thousands of women who were expected-especially those who were not accredited to the UN. Initially space was sought at area universities, but with June being graduation month, little was available. The US government offered the Custom House, one of the few buildings in New York under its supervision-not an ideal solution, but the only available option at the time. The Custom House was made available for activities sponsored by both US-based and non-US groups. Recognizing that the Custom House could not accommodate all events, a number of groups opted to find and/or pay for individual spaces for their events. Some groups like the National Council for Research on Women/CUNY Graduate Center and the Japanese Global Forum secured separate space and ran parallel activities that primarily focused on non-accredited NGOs.

Over the period from March to June, a number of individuals and organizations in New York worked hard to ensure that there would be space and events for everyone and responded to numerous requests from outside for assistance. This effort was severely hampered however by lack of solid information about how many women would be coming when and from where and with what needs. In retrospect, it probably would have been easier to deal with these issues if there had been one central body responsible for organizing and fundraising for a NGO Forum. But hindsight is often better than foresight, and this was not the decision made by the NGOs from around the world present at the CSW in March 99 and was not the tradition of UN Plus 5 events. Without that decision, all of the groups were acting on only part of the picture.

Negative impact of large Right Wing presence and of prolonged negotiations.

While not all problems can be reduced to these factors, they did considerably affect the atmosphere and use made of the public space that NGOs had acquired. For example, since the right wing had been disruptive at a number of NGO events in March, the Coordinating Committee chose not to discuss document strategies during the NGO Working Session because of the expected presence of a large number of NGOs working against parts of the Beijing Platform. In retrospect, many of us agree that the working session could have been more useful for NGOS if it had included more basic and strategic information and training about the document process-even if opposition NGOs were present.

Further, the endlessly drawn out process of the negotiations over the Outcomes Document and the threat of a backlash meant that many NGOs had to spend almost all their time following the document and could not participate in other NGO activities. This served to further separate those groups who were accredited and concentrating on the document and those involved in other parallel activities, especially if they were not accredited. While this is also a problem at world conferences, in New York the NGO events and the document negotiations were entirely overlapping in time-unlike Beijing and Nairobi where the NGO Forum started a week earlier and the government conference went on beyond the end of the Forum. Thus, many groups were drained of personnel and resources in trying to cover all of this at once in an atmosphere where backlash threatened even the gains made in Beijing.

Women NGOs continue to struggle for implementation of the Beijing Platform.

Regardless of mistakes made and frustrations endured, the global women's movement still prevailed in the Beijing + 5 process and negotiations. Women (and some men) came in record numbers as they did for the World Conference on Women in Beijing ­ proving once more that this is an issue central to people's lives and passions. The Beijing Platform for Action was reaffirmed and governments again pledged that it is their responsibility to work for its implementation. While there were not as many specific targets set and resources allocated as many of us sought, there were concrete advances that women can build upon as we work to implement the platform and to hold governments accountable to all their commitments to women. It is important to remember that Beijing is only one landmark and that women must also utilize and address other UN conference documents, human rights treaties-such as the Women's Convention-that are binding obligations, as well as other aspects of the UN and international system. The Beijing + 5 Review had its ups and downs, but it provided one more opportunity for public discussion of many issues that affect and concern women. Because of this event, the media has aired issues locally and globally-showing also the importance of women as a constituency for the UN. Most governments made reports on what they are doing to implement the platform, and many women engaged them in debates about what needs to be done through alternative reports and other vehicles. Women used the space to network and share strategies across cultural, racial, sexual, national, and other boundaries. It is women who have placed women's empowerment and human rights on the world's agenda utilizing events like the UN World Conferences as well as many other strategies. This has been one more such moment where women have again demonstrated their determination and leadership in working to realize justice and all human rights for all women in all our diversity.