CSW Youth Session

As delegates on Friday wrapped up a two-week conference on the status of women at the United Nations, the Trinidad-headquartered Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA) has joined its global counterparts in expressing deep concern about what it perceives to be serious threats to women’s issues.

CAFRA, a Regional Network of feminist, researchers, activists and women’s organisations – said that global developments, since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, threaten to undermine women’s advocacy for implementing the Beijing Platform for Action.

In a conference document, CAFRA, whose coordinator is Vincentian-born Nelcia Robinson, identified the “negative impact” of Trade Liberalisation as foremost among problems eroding women’s agenda.

Robinson, who also chairs the Barbados-based Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) and the Civil Society Advisory Committee to the Commonwealth Foundation, accentuated the significant adverse effects of trade liberalisation in a post-conference interview.

“Our research and every day work have shown that progress on Beijing will be extremely slow because of Trade Liberalisation”, said Robinson, who is also one of 11 commissioners on the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission of the proposed Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

“Under these policies, these small countries of the region have been adversely affected”, she added.

CAFRA also pointed to Washington’s so-called war on terror and the classification of the Caribbean as a middle-income region, which has resulted in the withdrawal of critical funding by donor countries, among other major issues emasculating the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

“For women, the resulting economic downturn has meant a greater struggle for survival and less time for political organising and mobilisation”, the document said.

In adopting the Beijing Platform for Action, 189 governments pledged to “advance the goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of humanity.” They also urged the United Nations system, regional and international institutions and all women and men to join them in “this noble effort.”

But despite the policy gains at Beijing and in other United Nations global forums in the 1990s, as well as the Millennium Summit, the New York based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), an international organisation that advocates for women’s equality in global policy, said many women in all regions of the world are worse off than they were 10 years ago.

“While there has been progress made through women’s advocacy and mobilisation”, it said in its report, “Beijing Betrayal,” “government inaction has stalled progress on national implementation of global commitments.”

WEDO said that though more governments have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Optional Protocol, which enables women to file complaints directly with the CEDAW Committee, few countries have removed their reservations.

In addition, few countries have incorporated CEDAW’s provisions into domestic policy, it said, pointing out that, in some cases, “explicitly discriminatory laws still remain.”

CAFRA described Caribbean Community (CARICOM) government’s attempt to implement the Beinjing Platform as “piecemeal” and “adhoc at best.”

“There is an urgent need for the region’s governments to take a structured approach to implementing national action plans,” it said, “and putting women’s interests and concerns at center stage”

Robinson said that poverty eradication is an increasing concern for women in the region. She said that Caribbean women have been seriously affected by structural adjustment measures because they constitute the majority of the poor and face various forms of discrimination in society.

The ex-president of the National Council of Women in St. Vincent and the Grenadines said that though gender budgeting is a recently-introduced concept, regional governments are yet to be fully committed to it.

CAFRA lamented the absence of laws, policies and programmes that address sex tourism, noting that the group has found that, in Jamaica, for example, “the sex trade is a realistic solution to unemployment for some women”

“Research conducted by CAFRA found that a women can earn more as a sex worker that as a domestic worker or waitress,” the report said. “Many sex workers questioned stated that they loved the job for the money and hated it for the sex.”

Delegates to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women called on governments to implement measures that would address the challenges facing women, noting that empowering women is the most effective tool for development and poverty eradication.

They also adopted a final resolution that stressed “a comprehensive approach” in the battle against trafficking in women and girls “for all forms of exploitation.”

The resolution noted that all states have an obligation to “exercise due diligence” to avert, investigate and penalize perpetrators of trafficking in persons, and that states must provide protection to victims.

It encouraged governments to heighten collaboration with non-governmental organisations to develop and implement comprehensive programmes, including the provision of shelter and help-lines to victims or potential victims of trafficking, and for effective counselling, training and social and economic reintegration into society of victims.