REPRESENTATIVES OF UNFPA, UNDP REPORT TO WOMEN'S ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE ON THEIR EFFORTS TOWARDS WOMEN'S ADVANCEMENT
Press Release
WOM/975
REPRESENTATIVES OF UNFPA, UNDP REPORT TO WOMEN'S ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE ON THEIR EFFORTS TOWARDS WOMEN'S ADVANCEMENT
19970707 Governments must be held accountable for protecting the reproductive and sexual rights of women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women was told this afternoon by a representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), speaking on behalf of its Executive Director.Consensus agreements reached at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women demonstrated that the world community now accepted that States were responsible for respecting and protecting reproductive and sexual rights and for enabling women to enjoy those rights, he said.
The 23-member Committee is the monitoring body for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Also, a representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) told the Committee that the Programme was increasing both financial and human resources to gender equality and the advancement of women. Further, it was building national capacity among 134 countries to strengthen the enabling policy and legal frameworks for gender equality and improving women's access to assets and resources, including decision-making.
In addition this afternoon, the Committee clarified the mandates and organization of work for its two working groups. The first of two standing working groups will consider and suggest ways and means of expediting the work of the Committee, including the question of the pre-session working group of the Committee and its organization. So far as the Committee's rules of procedure were concerned, a small group would look into those.
The second working group will consider ways and means of implementing article 21 of the Convention. Article 21 provides that the Committee may make suggestions and general recommendations based on the examination of reports and information received from States parties. It would also pursue the question of relations with specialized agencies and the possible contribution of the Committee to the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So far as the draft optional protocol to the Convention was concerned, working group II would meet with the Committee's designated resource person to the open-ended working group of the Commission on the
Status of Women on that protocol. However, in that context, it was emphasized that the actual protocol was very much the responsibility of Member States in the Commission.
Further this afternoon, some experts suggested that the Committee should look into human rights violations endured by women in Algeria, as well as investigate women's situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. The Committee could not be completely silent on those issues, it was said. Other experts stressed that violence in Algeria had affected the whole civilian population, not just women. So far as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was concerned, some experts noted that if anything the new Government there needed assistance. The Chairperson said that the issue would be discussed in the bureau to determine further action.
The Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, 8 July, to begin consideration of the initial report of Namibia.
Statements
In a statement on behalf of Dr. NAFIS SADIK, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), SETHURAMIAH RAO, Director of the Technical and Evaluation Division of the Fund, said the Convention was valuable in supporting efforts to ensure women's reproductive rights and health. Articles 12 and 16 (e) of the Convention were closely in line with the agreement reached by 179 nations at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in September 1994 and with the Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing a year later. The Cairo Programme of Action placed reproductive and sexual health and rights at the centre of the population and development agenda. It also committed governments to strive to ensure universal access by 2015 to comprehensive reproductive health care, including family planning and services to protect sexual health.
The consensus agreements reached at the Cairo and Beijing Conferences demonstrated that the world community now accepted that States were responsible for respecting and protecting reproductive and sexual rights and for enabling women to enjoy those rights, he said. Governments must be held accountable for providing that protection. The Committee experts had been key players in a historic round table meeting held in Glen Cove, New York, last December. Together with experts from other treaty bodies and representatives of United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations, they had discussed ways in which the various human rights instruments might provide support for efforts to protect reproductive and sexual health and rights.
Among the more than 30 recommendations of the meeting was a call for the treaty bodies to incorporate reproductive and sexual rights in their guidelines for examining States' reports, and to use the Cairo and Beijing
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decisions, where applicable, in preparing guidelines, general comments, recommendations and responses to reports.
Various efforts had been undertaken to follow up the Glen Cove recommendations, he said. The UNFPA and Committee experts had met in January to lay the groundwork for a working partnership. The Fund was considering ways to involve the Committee in activities to effectively incorporate human rights education in the Fund's programming process. The Fund had also been working with the Division for the Advancement of Women to identify areas for collaboration to strengthen implementation of the Convention. In addition, at the initiative of the UNFPA, an inter-agency working group of gender and human rights focal points had been recently established to identify opportunities to use human rights and reproductive rights to enhance the quality of life of women and men.
Reproductive and sexual health and rights were the focus of UNFPA's 1997 State of World Population report, he said. The report had noted that "international understandings about sexual and reproductive rights have broadened considerably over the past three decades".
The Convention and other human rights instruments were critical tools in helping governments, the international community and the civil society to promote and protect those rights, he said. Every effort should be made to encourage countries to ratify the Convention and to encourage the ratifying countries to remove their reservations. Governments needed to incorporate the Convention's provisions into national policies, laws and procedures. It was also imperative that women were made aware of their rights and had access to legal means of securing those rights. Legal protections of those rights should be enforced. The UNFPA was contributing to that endeavour through reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health; population and development strategies and advocacy. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approached, it was time to put an end to practices which forced women into a subordinate role, abused their health and minimized their contribution to the family, the community and the nation.
In an exchange of views following the UNFPA presentation, experts spoke of the need for information campaigns on reproductive and sexual health issues and an appeal was made to the UNFPA to provide resources for its field office in Ghana. Attention was also drawn to the need for training courses on such issues as gender and development. It was also reiterated that increasing awareness about motherhood and spacing of children were very important.
BENJAMIN GURMAN, Officer-in-Charge, Gender in Development, Bureau for Policy Programme Support, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said UNDP's commitment to the elimination of discrimination against women had a number of dimensions. First, at the country level, through the Resident Coordinator system, the UNDP was working closely with United Nations system
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partners in inter-agency working groups and task forces to promote gender equality and the advancement of women. For example, in Afghanistan, with the leadership of the Resident Coordinator, and a task force led by the United Nations Special Adviser on Gender Issues, there was a common United Nations system position dealing with gender issues.
Second, the UNDP was building national capacity among 134 countries to strengthen the enabling policy and legal frameworks for gender equality and improving women's access to assets and resources, including decision-making, he said. Third, the UNDP was increasing both financial and human resources to gender equality and the advancement of women. A 20 per cent allocation target was set for that purpose. Fourth, with regard to capacity development, the UNDP was pleased to announce the forthcoming placement of United Nations Volunteers Gender specialists in 20 countries. Their terms of reference included monitoring legal and policy frameworks for the advancement of women, health education and reproductive rights, conflict situations and violence against women.
Fifth, as a follow-up to the Beijing Conference and the work of the Human Development Report on gender equality, the UNDP was supporting the further development of statistical systems and gender equality indicators for measuring women's status in societies, he said. It was also providing assistance to increase gender disaggregated data within the growing number of human development reports. Sixth, at the country level, the UNDP was providing support to the implementation of national action plans for accession to and implementation of the Convention. At the regional level, support was being provided, among others, to sub-Saharan African countries to facilitate public awareness campaigns through the translation of the Platform for Action and of the Convention into indigenous languages.
In a discussion following the statement, experts expressed appreciation that the UNDP had embarked on sustained legislative reforms on issues related to gender problems. They hoped that policy would be stepped up.
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