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WSSD Final Plan Reaffirms Importance of Saving Women's Lives
PLANetWIRE
2002-09-05
Johannesburg, Sep. 4 Women have held their own at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which ended today with a promise by the 7,000 delegates to reduce poverty while protecting Earth’s environment.
The victory reinstated language affirming women’s rights that has been included in United Nations conference documents since 1993 but that was absent from this summit’s draft document.
Conservative delegates backed by the Vatican and the United States, among others, fought until late Tuesday to keep a reference to human rights out of the list of elements that the document said should be considered in providing health services to women.
Without such language, Zeitlin and others said, the document would have named only “cultural and religious values” as considerations, leaving countries free to continue such practices as female genital mutilation or denying health care to women as cultural values.
The Bush administration said it opposed adding the language on procedural grounds.
Delegates from South Africa and Barbados were among the strongest advocates for including the human rights phrase in the draft document’s Paragraph 47, which describes elements that should be considered in providing health care for women as part of promoting sustainable development.
Defeat on this issue would have represented a rollback on women’s rights from language approved by UN conferences in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1999 and 2000. Opponents of women’s rights would also have cited the Johannesburg language as the new standard for documents from future gatherings.
“We are very happy with the final document and its recognition that women’s human rights are a critical element of reproductive health care around the world,” said Stirling Scruggs, spokesperson for UNFPA, the UN Population Fund, which is active in providing such care to women in more than 140 countries.(PLANetWIRE,Johannesburg, Sep.4)
JOHANNESBURG, Sep. 4—Women have held their own at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development, which ended today with a promise by the 7,000 delegates
to reduce poverty while protecting Earth’s environment.
“We won! We won!” declared June Zeitlin, executive director of the
Women’s Environmental and Development Organization, after a late-night
negotiating session. The victory reinstated language affirming women’s rights
that has been included in United Nations conference documents since 1993 but
that was absent from this summit’s draft document.
Conservative delegates backed by the Vatican and the United States, among
others, fought until late Tuesday to keep a reference to human rights out of the
list of elements that the document said should be considered in providing health
services to women. Without such language, Zeitlin and others said, the document
would have named only “cultural and religious values” as considerations,
leaving countries free to continue such practices as female genital mutilation
or denying health care to women as cultural values.
The Bush administration said it opposed adding the language on procedural
grounds.
“All day yesterday they were claiming the only objection was procedural,
while quietly they were trying to kill it,” said one women’s rights
advocate. “When it became the only issue that hadn’t been decided, they
couldn’t openly oppose human rights.”
Delegates from South Africa and Barbados were among the strongest advocates
for including the human rights phrase in the draft document’s Paragraph 47,
which describes elements that should be considered in providing health care for
women as part of promoting sustainable development.
The most vocal opposing delegates included several from Egypt and Argentina,
and negotiations continued until 1 a.m. Wednesday. “There were three clauses
modifying the idea and they shuffled them around to save face, but the order
makes no difference,” the advocate said. “They also took out ‘all’ in
front of ‘human rights,’ but that doesn’t matter either. Basically it’s
a total victory.”
Defeat on this issue would have represented a rollback on women’s rights
from language approved by UN conferences in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1999 and 2000.
Opponents of women’s rights would also have cited the Johannesburg language as
the new standard for documents from future gatherings.
“We are very happy with the final document and its recognition that
women’s human rights are a critical element of reproductive health care around
the world,” said Stirling Scruggs, spokesperson for UNFPA, the UN Population
Fund, which is active in providing such care to women in more than 140
countries.
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