Women’s rights on a global scale at Beijing+20

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Some countries, among which Turkey also exists, do not express the necessary rigor in fulfilling the commitments they make at meetings. Due to the lack of a political will to establishing full gender equality, those commitments made at international arena are swept under the carpet and forgotten at national level.

The fifty-ninth session of the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women was held at United Nations Headquarters in New York from March 9-20, 2015. The UN hosts global discussions on gender equality every year, widely attended by many states.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was established as a functional commission of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN by a Council resolution on June 21, 1946. The fundamental objective of the CSW is to guarantee the implementation of the principle of woman’s equality in relation to men. In this framework, the tasks of the CSW are to form global policies to improve women’s rights; to make recommendations to ECOSOC with the aim to improve women’s rights in political, economic, social and educational areas. The CSW deals with urgent problems concerning women’s rights in addition to preparing reports on these topics.

The Commission on the Status of Women convenes for ten days every March. These meetings are finalized with the determination of policy documents/recommendations called “Agreed Conclusions.” These texts give concrete recommendations on the priority theme to be put into practice on international, national, regional and local levels by all relevant parties such as governments, intergovernmental organs and civil society.

The CSW is the main organ within the body of the UN where policies of gender equality are negotiated on a global level. Members of the commission have an annual meeting in New York to discuss a “priority theme” in the context of a program announced approximately three months beforehand.1 The specific topic title or thematic area of gender equality/inequality is determined by an office within the Commission.

Review of Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

The main theme of the fifty-ninth session was determined as the review of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, where the declaration was adopted:

“The Commission has been given responsibility by the General Assembly for following up the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action within the UN system and giving recommendations to the Economic and Social Council. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted in the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in 1995, the fifty-ninth session of the Commission reviewed the global state of implementation of the guidelines for women’s rights determined in the Beijing Conference. One of the targets of the session was to evaluate to what extent the countries realized the commitments they made at the 4th World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, and to develop strategies to attain a more effective implementation of the Platform for Action, adopted in Beijing.”

The Political Declaration prepared and signed by the official committees representing governments in this special UN session, called the Beijing+20, reflects political approaches that will affect women’s daily lives all over the world. Despite the fact that the Political Declaration is accepted as a binding policy guideline for all member states, there is currently no mechanism for its implementation and monitoring.

The framework established by the Political Declaration, outlined at Beijing+20, threatens to become a major step backward by failing to match the level of ambition concerning women’s rights in the declaration prepared at the Beijing Conference twenty years ago. This development can be seen as a reflection of the rising conservatism around the globe, a conservatism that has chosen women’s rights as its fundamental target.

We would like to refer to the Beijing Conference and the declaration adopted in the conference at this point. The booklet Women’s Human Rights in the UN and Turkey’s Commitments, published in 2001 by the Association of Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways, maps out the developments before and after the Beijing Conference. The Beijing Conference and the developments before and after it can be summarized as follows:

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

The UN adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1979. The Convention was signed by 53 states and went into effect at the UN’s Second World Conference on Women.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women obliges states to take concrete steps towards eliminating discrimination against women and to prevent all other persons, organisations or institutions from discriminating against women. The Convention is binding in all the signatory states.

This means that the states are obliged to harmonize their legal systems in accordance with the Convention articles and to follow policies to prevent discrimination against women. A Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women was established with 23 members to monitor the implementation of the Convention. Having signed the document, the states are obliged to present reports to the Committee in a year’s time after they sign the Convention and every four years afterwards.

Turkey signed the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 1985. However, since there are some provisions in Turkey’s Civil Code that are incongruous with the Convention, Turkey specified some reservations on certain points. These reservations were to be valid until the necessary procedures were taken in the domestic law to overcome these conflicts. Turkey removed its reservations in 1999 as the new law draft was prepared and improved Turkey’s situation to a certain extent when the new Civil Code was finally passed by the Parliament in 2001.

Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

The UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, gave the message that women’s problems are universal. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, accepted by 189 countries at the end of the conference, called governments to prevent and erase violence against women from the face of the earth, underlining that women’s rights are human rights. The Declaration underscored that the extreme violence directed against women in armed conflict is a crime against humanity; and obliged governments to empower women, increase women’s social status, improve gender equality and incorporate a gender perspective in their fundamental policies and programs.

The Beijing Conference confirmed that most of the targets established to be attained by the year 2000 in the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies, which were determined on the Third World Conference on Women in 1985, had not been realized. Conducting an assessment of the situation, the Beijing Conference determined 12 areas of priority and urgency for the Platform for Action. Governments, non-governmental organisations and the private sector were called to focus their resources and activities in the areas specified below and take concrete action to address the following:

• The burden of continually increasing poverty on women’s shoulders.

• Inequality and inadequacy in education and access to educational services.

• Inequality and inadequacy in health and related services as well as access to these services.

• Violence against women.

• The effects of armed conflict on women.

• Inequality regarding economic structures and policies, all production activities and access to resources.

• Gender inequality in mechanisms of authority and decision-making.

• Inadequacy in spreading and protecting women’s human rights.

• Inequality concerning participation in and access to all communication systems, starting with the media. 

• Gender-based inequalities in the management of natural resources and the protection of the environment.

• Discrimination against girls and infringement of girls’ rights.

• The inadequacy on all levels concerning the mechanisms for increasing women’s social status.

The Association of Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways, which has been participating in the CSW sessions for several years, expresses the significance and content of the CSW sessions in the aforementioned booklet as follows:

In each of the CSW sessions topics that are difficult to discuss and are considered taboo in many countries have been brought up for discussion; and progressive steps concerning women’s human rights have been taken on the basis of international consensus. Thanks to international pressure created by the decisions taken during long discussions, the governments are forced to put human rights violations, the presence of which they have previously refused to acknowledge, on their agenda. These meetings are milestones in that regard.

Some countries, including Turkey, have not been rigorous enough in realizing the commitments they made in the meetings. The promises made in the international arena have been forgotten and brushed under the rug as a result of the lack of political will to fully attain gender equality on a national level. Moreover, as time passes, we also see opponents of change mobilizing to take back the gains which have already been made by women, and they occasionally succeed in doing so.

Turkey signed the outcome documents and action clauses of the Beijing Conference and the UN special session Beijing+5 in 1995 and 2000 respectively without specifying any reservations.2

The 2015 Declaration turned into a fait accompli

Beijing+20, held this year 20 years after the Beijing Declaration, has broken new ground. In the past years, the Political Declaration was created during the session discussions. However, this year it was prepared before the session and was voted on and accepted on the opening day on March 9, 2015.

We believe beyond a doubt that the fundamental reason for preparing the Political Declaration in a fait accompli manner by not letting the majority of women’s organisations in the world (of which LBTI women also constitute an important part) join the negotiations is to exclude women’s organisations and feminists (who have been the most fundamental actors of all the gains made in favour of women in the UN, including the establishment of the CSW) from the process and thus to promote conservative values. Nevertheless, the women’s organisations and feminists who joined the session via a declaration declared that they would not accept being suspended from decision-making mechanisms.

As a matter of fact, when we examine the Political Declaration adopted in the 59th session, we see the effects of the endeavours of the pressure groups that consists of the Vatican and some fundamentalist Muslim and Christian governments. Their attempts to include conservative values in the declaration include promoting maternal roles for women, strengthening the heterosexual family and controlling women’s sexual and bodily rights.

This conservative bloc argued for leaving expressions referring to all women without exception (such as “no woman can be subjected to discrimination” or “every woman’s right”) and even the notion of gender out of the declaration during the 59th session in order to prevent the declaration from including LBTI (lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex) women. The conservative bloc tried to make the discussions more conservative on issues such as sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion, and to find allies in that regard by participating in the discussions both during the general assembly and its off-shoot events.

“I am a lesbian mother, too.”

For example, the 59th session hosted a meeting about LBTI women’s rights under the title “The Role of Governments in Ending Violence and Discrimination Against Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Women” with the representation of governments and international institutions. It was co-organized by the Coalition of UN Member States, Observers, the Council of Europe, The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Women, Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).

This event was also the first event about LBTI women to be organized at UN Headquarters. The Vatican representatives participating in the session demonstrated their approach with statements such as “Since when homosexual relationships been acknowledged as a right in international conventions? We need to protect the family.” This approach is only one example of the general conservative attitude which consistently attacked women’s rights during Beijing+20. The aforementioned question was answered by the moderator Lydia Alpízar Durán, director of AWID  (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) which is one of the most powerful women’s organisations worldwide, with the answer, “I am a lesbian mother, too.”3

Despite the fact that Beijing+20 witnessed a regression in discussions, even failing to match the level of commitment in the Beijing Declaration. However, the Political Declaration did not regress as far as the conservative bloc wanted it to thanks to the persevering struggle of women’s organisations. But it still reached a point where it became difficult to even maintain the gains women had previously achieved.

These kinds of rigorously defiant and conservative efforts to dominate the international community on the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration instead of trying to go beyond the Declaration on the issue of gender equality proves once again how vital it is to continue the international struggle for women’s rights at least as decisively as it was at the beginning of the women’s movement.

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1    The session program of CSW is determined according to the ECOSOC resolution 2009/15. (http://www.un.org/en/ecosoc/docs/2009/resolution%202009-15.pdf).

2    “Birleşmiş Milletler’de Kadının İnsan Hakları ve Türkiye’nin Taahhütleri” (Women’s Human Rights in the UN and Turkey’s Commitments), Assocation of Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways, December, 2001. Contributors: Ela Anıl, Pınar İlkkaracan, Zülal Kılıç, Karin Ronge, Gülşah Seral, Tuluğ Ülgen.

3    There are various perspectives within the LGBTI movement concerning the question whether it is right to tell the conservatives, who oppose homosexuality to protect the family, that homosexuals have families, too. I would prefer to close this discussion as it is not within the scope of this article to discuss the possible outcomes of homosexuals’ support for alternative family models, which bears the risk of strengthening the family as an institution, versus the rejection of family as an institution. I hope to examine these points in another article.

For progressive policies which can make a meaningful difference in our lives

Women’s organisations and feminists outlined the following demands in the declaration they wrote in reaction to the Beijing+20 Final Declaration:

 As representatives of women’s organizations, feminist organizations, and organizations that work to achieve the full realization of the human rights of women and girls, we express our anger about the manner in which we have been excluded, both from the political declaration meeting and the decision-making process for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Working Methods.

We supported CSW as a space where we could express our ideas and have an effect on the critical policies that influence our lives and future in the present context of rising threats against the human rights of women and girls while civil society is pushed to a corner on all global and national levels.

It seems, however, that the governments are intent on closing this door by trying to limit the strong participation of non-governmental organisations, restrict the promotion of women’s and girls’ human rights, and prevent the norm-setting role of CSW in that regard as well as evading their responsibility to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Let us be clear at this point: The reason why we have come to the CSW is to make our governments guarantee gender equality, eliminate all sorts of discrimination and violence against us and take responsibility for the commitments they have made for the full realization of our human rights. We have come to CSW to develop progressive policies that can trigger a meaningful change in our lives as long as they are put into practice. Unless the CSW can provide the means to hold a forum that includes us all in order to change policies and take responsibility, we will prefer to not participate in CSW at all.

Demands concerning the “Working Methods”

In order to make it possible for CSW to be continually concerned about women’s lives, we demand the following about the decision on the Working Methods:

To acknowledge the role CSW plays in the full realization of women’s and girls’ human rights as well as its norm-setting role.

To sustain cooperation with the CEDAW Committee and the Working Group on the Issue of Discrimination against Women in Law and in Practice.

To strengthen the role civil society plays within the commission by also opening the negotiations on “Agreed Conclusions” to the observation of non-governmental organisations (and not only for a few selected NGOs); to harmonize the interventions by NGOs and the interventions by governments during the general discussion.

To increase the participation of NGOs in the panels, round tables and other interactive dialogues.

To enable the CSW to play a role in monitoring the execution of the Sustainable Development Goals, which include important commitments concerning gender equality and which will be a vital instrument for improving gender equality and women’s and girls’ human rights in years ahead.

The voice and struggle of global women’s organisations

Women’s organisations and feminist organisations have struggled for the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the establishment of UN Women, and all the local and national changes that have created progress toward gender equality and enabled us to enjoy our human rights.

We expect UN Women and member states to stand by our side in securing our place in the decision-making process so as to make sure that nothing discussed about us will be discussed in our absence.

The relationship between the involvement of the conservative bloc and the involvement of the global women’s movement is an action and reaction process that is very worthy of careful observation in coming years, too. It is evident that the women’s movement has become an international dissident power. The fact that the conservative bloc came to the CSW sessions with extensive preparations as well as the efforts they put into excluding the perspective of women’s organisations from the documents and their lobby activities in that regard confirm this idea.

The harsh interventions to prevent NGOs from entering official negotiations and voicing their concerns this year point to a process that needs to be carefully observed. Unfortunately, also Turkey exhibited this approach for the first time this year.

There has been an ongoing debate about reviewing the CSW working methods to make it possible for the global women’s movement, which represents the demands of women worldwide but cannot take part in official committees, to play a more effective role. No decision was reached on this issue in the fifty-ninth session either, leaving the opinions and demands of the global women’s movement unanswered once again.

Effective mechanisms and active participation of NGOs

The fundamental topic of discussion is the establishment of mechanisms for the effective inclusion of the voice, concerns and suggestions of women’s organisations in the policy-making processes for the creation of global gender equality policies. One of these mechanisms is to invite female experts/NGO representatives to official governmental committees, ensuring their active participation in negotiations. This tradition existed for a long period throughout different governments in Turkey, making Turkey one of the primary countries leading the discussions in a positive direction. Consequently, Turkey has been referred to as an exemplary country by the UN many times.

However, especially this year, the Ministry of Family and Social Policies preferred a hard-line stance on the issue of permitting only ministry representatives and diplomats to join the discussions; therefore, this ended the tradition of participation that had continued for years. This approach is sure to become a topic of discussion in the period ahead. The lack of monitoring mechanisms by governments to ensure the execution of the “Agreed Conclusions,” which are outlined at the end of the CSW sessions, will remain a topic of discussion on the agenda of NGOs.