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Thursday, March 17, 2005

Women's Role Is Critical in Global Stabilization

By Denise Tessier
Of the Journal
    The two-week United Nations event that closed this past Friday received minimal publicity; there was no formal call for participation. Yet, more than 6,000 women from more than 130 countries were drawn to New York City to participate.
    How well their voices are heard by world governments could determine prospects for future global health in terms of poverty, disease and even war.
    Participants met in the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women session to review gains and losses in the decade since a landmark conference in Beijing established women's rights as fundamental.
    Dozens of health experts, economists and others, representing virtually every continent and hailing from the largest to tiniest of nations, reported both progress and despair.
    Their action this time was to reaffirm the Beijing platform, in which governments agreed to address 12 specific areas of concern for women and girls, including promotion of education, ending violence and ensuring access to health care. They also crafted forward-looking strategies for encouraging and strengthening national policies that recognize women's basic rights.
    The session was not without controversy. The Beijing platform passed after being stalled by a U.S. government attempt to inject anti-abortion language into the document. Faced with outraged reaction from both participants and the world press, U.S. objections were withdrawn. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., rightly called the U.S. incident an embarrassment.
    Reproductive rights were an important part of the discussion, however. The number of females with HIV, especially young girls, has increased alarmingly worldwide— attributable in part to policies that allow or fail to prevent forced and early marriages, the growing sex trade, and violence against women domestically and during war.
    Fundamentalist movements are blamed for reversing gains and freedoms affecting all aspects of women's life, including reproductive and overall health.
    As women's rights are eroded, the fabric of nations becomes frayed. It can be seen in infant mortality rates, in a lack of education and health services— factors that create the instability that can lead to terrorism and/or civil war.
    On the flip side, improvements in the rights of women have had a direct hand helping nations prosper. Countries that target women with loans, or safeguard their right to own or inherit property or water rights have experienced better overall conditions for families.
    Empowered with control over even meager resources, women tend to invest those resources in education for children, health care and environmental stewardship of the land.
    One example: Since implementing PROGRESA, an anti-poverty program directed at women, Mexico has reported a 14 percent increase in female enrollment in secondary school and a 12 percent drop in illness among both boys and girls.
    "Study after study has taught us that there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in addressing the conference March 8, International Women's Day. "And I would venture that no policy is more important in preventing conflict, or in achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended."
    Now history, the conference was a crucial prelude to the U.N. summit that will be held in New York in September, at which world leaders will similarly assess how nations are doing in terms of achieving their Millennium Development Goals for cutting global poverty in half by 2015.
    Another consensus from the women's summit: Unless nations aggressively adopt the reaffirmed Beijing platform and encourage equitable treatment of women and respect for their rights, goals that aim to reduce worldwide poverty don't have a chance.
   

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