United Nations Initiates Five Year Review of Beijing Women’s Conference

By Austin Ruse | 1999

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) UN Members States met in Beijing, China four years ago to convene the Fourth World Conference on Women. This controversial meeting produced the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which were intended to advance women's rights across a broad spectrum of topics.

     The UN has now embarked on a five year review of that original conference and has already begun a series of international meetings that will culminate in a Special Session of the UN General Assembly June 5 – 9 at UN headquarters in New York City. Bejing+5, officially called "Women 2,000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty First Century," will review the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and will write an entirely new document.

     The Beijing Platform for Action addressed twelve areas of concern for women, including "Women and Poverty," "Women and Health," "Women and the Economy," "Women in Power and Decision Making," "Human Rights of Women," "and "The Girl Child."

     The document calls for women to receive "the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health," and goes on to define health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."  The document claims that "women's health is determined by the social, political, and economic context of their lives, as well as by biology." It states that the chief barrier to women's health is "inequality."

     As in most UN documents of the past decade, reproductive health played a large role in the Beijing Platform for Action. The document states that "reproductive health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being.in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes." The World Health Organization defines "reproductive health" as including access to abortion. Since reproductive health was a major area of contention in the just completed review of the Cairo Conference, it is expected the topic will play a central role in the Beijing review.

     Informal consultations for Beijing+5 have already begun in New York City. And regional Beijing+5 preparatory meetings are scheduled for the next several months. The Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific meets October 26 – 29 in Bangkok. The Economic Commission for Africa meets November 22 – 27 in Addis Ababa. The Economic Commission for Western Asia meets this November in Beirut. The Economic Council for Europe meets next January in Geneva. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean meets in Lima next January.

     The most important official meeting leading to the Special Session of the UN General Assembly will be the final Beijing+5 prepcom. This will be part of the agenda of the Commission on the Status of Women, which meets March 6 – 24 at UN headquarters in New York City.

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