She was ten years old when Beijing’s commitment to a world of equality, development and peace was declared — at 25, Linley Faulkner is in New York at Beijing+15, wondering where the years — and the BPA, went.
“I still wonder how useful the document is now. As a statute it is very useful but I have to wonder how it will be applied in the future,” she says.”There are new things being put out, we have the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) and a new climate, with new initiatives — I have to wonder is it going to be the big thing to continue, or continue to be the big thing?”
Faulkner is a Canadian university student of Filipino descent doing an internship with DAWN, the Development Alternatives for Women entering a New era. She finds herself 15 years after Beijing having to reach out to reconnect with a pre-internet memory of 1995. While she and millions of other girl children covered in the Beijing Declaration had gotten on with their teen lives, the defining moment for two decades of women’s conferencing had stepped back to exhale, taking a burst of renewed vigour with a UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) in 2000; but downsized to take over the CSW agenda every five years, where it continues to be placed, likely to be waiting on the new GEAR ‘gentity’ for a revamp of its early marketing.
Meanwhile in the age of the internet and a more sexier, streamlined global branding of approaches like the MDGs, Faulkner has a valid point.
From her observations at this CSW meet, she says “there’s been some interesting progress, but there is so much work to be done. I’m hoping my experience of CSW doesn’t make me jaded!”, she laughs.
While her words would horrify the Beijing thousands whose activism created the outcomes document from the China meeting, for Fiji’s Tara Chetty, who was at high school in 1995, the focus on the MDGs as an empowerment initiative is something she sees as a point of distraction for Beijing.
“I knew about it because my mother came back with some corny knick-knacks from the Great Wall of China. I’ve only really come to it properly after ten years since it was first passed, and now we are here.”
‘Here’ for Chetty is a working up-close look with a global human rights defenders coalition while doing her Masters in Women’s and Gender studies at Rutgers University in New York. She says lots of mention is being made of CSW, but not the main one, the BPA.
“I think only once today I heard the BPA word mentioned. It was in a panel on sexual orientation, culture and religion, where it was the reaffirmation of women’s rights as human rights. Sometimes in these side events we are not making a lot of reference to the fact that we have a declaration there.”
“I actually feel it’s one of our strongest commitments we’ve produced as a movement. That’s the one that needs our support. The worrying thing is the distraction of the MDGs and other less powerful, less detailed and targetted documents.” Chetty says the disconnect from those like her colleague speaks of a lack of implementation of the Declaration.
“I guess I was trying to see where I could fit into it and where there are areas in it that are limiting or helpful,” says Faulkner “but overall, I will support any document that does anything for women.”–
–LWL
Source: Pacific Gender Action Portal http://www.pacificgap.info/2010/03/beijings-daughters-doubtful-and.html
Listen to PODCASTS (CSW 54/55) by Visiting the Resources Page HERE.