Building a sustainable and equitable world

An address by Vivienne Wee, DAWN, to the Fourth World Conference on Women, 1995

Madam Chairperson,
Distinguished Delegates and NGO Sisters,

I am privileged to address you on behalf of DAWN, a Southern women’s network that was founded in 1985 at the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing thus marks the tenth anniversary of DAWN.

In these ten years, the Women’s Movement has grown into a global force for change working at multiple levels. Women have been powerfully present at this global level of policy-making long before this present Conference. Over the last four years, at the UN Conferences in Rio, Vienna, Cairo and Copenhagen, governments and the international community have come to a consensus that women play a key role in all development processes. It has become clear that our problems of ecological sustainability, human rights, population and poverty, can be solved only by taking into account women’s concerns and realities. This should not be that surprising because women do constitute half of society and no human problem can be solved by ignoring half of society.

The Fourth World Conference on Women is thus a double landmark. Not only does it mark ten years after Nairobi, it also marks the culmination of the recent series of UN Conferences on key development issues. At this Conference, the global community must consolidate the gains made at these preceding Conferences and seriously commit resources for the effective implementation of the recommendations that have come out of these Conferences.

But the Fourth World Conference on Women is also a Conference of Women by Women. Forty thousand women have come to Beijing to participate in this event. More would come if they had been able to. We are here because this is our Conference. Women’s needs, women’s rights and women’s realities must thus be located at the heart of the debate going on right here. What is at stake is not just women’s well-being but the future of our entire human race.

As we approach the 21st century, we are experiencing many complex and difficult changes amounting to a global crisis of collective survival. The end of the Cold War has not brought global peace as we had expected. Instead, it has generated new political alignments and new patterns of war and conflict, especially large-scale violence within nation-states. About 90 per cent of war casualties in recent years are not soldiers, but civilians, mostly women and children. Approximately 20 million people are refugees, of whom 75 per cent are women and children. The systematic rape of women has become a prevalent war crime.

New forms of prejudice and bigotry have also arisen based on religious fanaticism, racism, and conservatism. These forms of bigotry serve to
restrict women’s access to economic, political and social resources.

After the Cold War, the world is undergoing economic globalisation. While this process has generated new economic opportunities, it has also
brought about new patterns of wealth and poverty. Women now constitute 70 per cent of the world’s 1.3 billion absolute poor. Women earn only 10 per cent of the world’s income and own only 1 per cent of the world’s property.

Economic globalisation is also exacerbating our environmental crisis. As a result, women in the rural sector are losing their livelihood resources, with hardly any compensatory access to new economic opportunities. At the same time, they continue to be responsible for the care of family and community on a reduced and degraded resource base. Women’s lives and livelihoods are thus seriously at risk.

Why has this happened? What are the systematic processes that have brought about a crisis of such proportions? We need to address these fundamental questions collectively as a global community. If we fail to ask and answer these questions, then we have little hope of halting the ongoing processes that are producing and reproducing crisis situations for women all over the world. Such a world is clearly unsustainable and inequitable. We cannot move into the 21st century with half of humanity subject to systematic violence, impoverishment, dispossession and
displacement. What kind of world is this that we bequeath to our daughters and grand-daughters?

We are ultimately accountable to our daughters, our grand-daughters and the generations that follow The words and paragraphs that are being debated here so painstakingly have meanings and consequences for future generations. That is what we are addressing here at this Conference. As a global community, we need to look beyond the short-term gains of particular interest groups and power blocs. As a global community, our moral responsibility is to envision and build a sustainable and equitable world where all our daughters, grand-daughters and succeeding generations can enjoy stable, peaceful and healthy lives.

This requires collective commitment and political will. It requires a global coalition of all sectors and all levels of society, including governments, NGOs and international organisations. Such a coalition must be responsive to the needs, rights and realities of all women, especially the poorest women living in the most remote communities. We need leaders and institutions that are sincerely committed to the best interests of
the world’s women and the future generations who follow. Ultimately, the question for us all — both women and men — is the question of commitment and accountability.

At this important conference, we the women of the world seek the following commitments from the global community of nations:

One, we call for a Declaration and a Platform for Action founded on women’s rights, responsive to women’s realities and accountable to women as global constituency.

Two, we call for the effective implementation of the recommendations coming out of this Conference, as well as those coming out of preceding Conferences at Rio, Vienna, Cairo and Copenhagen.

Three, we call for the universal ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women as an international legal framework for gender equity and equality.

Four, we call for the allocation of adequate and substantial resources, as well as the mobilisation of new and additional resources enough to make a real difference to the lives of women as half of humanity.

Five, we call for the strengthening of UNIFEM as the lead United Nations agency mandated to bring about women’s economic and political empowerment.

Six, we call for a new development agenda that will systematically address the processes of causation that have brought about our global crisis of unsustainability and poverty.

Seven, we call on all governments to work towards the elimination of all forms of violence against women and all forms of prejudice and bigotry that deprive women of their full and equal human rights.

Finally, we call on the governments of the world to look beyond narrow political interests to commit themselves seriously and sincerely to the making of a better world for all, particularly all our daughters and grand-daughters.

Beijing, China in 1995.