Globalising women’s rights: Confronting unequal development between the UN rights framework and the WTO trade agreements
A REPORT OF WIDE’S ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2004
Gustav-Stresemann-Institut, BONN
21—22 MAY 2004
EDITED BY
MANDY MACDONALD
JUNE 2004
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY
Mandy Macdonald, report editor
PROCEEDINGS
1Welcome and introduction
1.1Birgit Dederichs-Bain, NRO-Frauenforum Chair, Germany
1.2Brigitte Holzner, WIDE Chair, The Netherlands
1.3Ursula Schäfer-Preuss, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany
2Keynote speech and discussion
2.1Keynote speech:Women’s rights between the UN human rights framework and free trade agreements
Devaki Jain, India
2.2Discussion
3Panel: Beyond equal rights – political concepts and perspectives
3.1Developmentalism, Claudia von Braunmühl, Germany
3.2Social justice movements, Virginia Vargas, Peru
3.3Localisation, Carolina Coppel Urrea, Mexico
3.4The diversity approach, Irma Velásquez Nimatuj, Guatemala
3.5Discussion
4Experiences from four regions
4.1Africa:Christiana Charles-Iyoha, Development Information Network, Nigeria
4.2Asia:Azra Talat Sayeed, ROOTS, Pakistan
4.3Europe:Mirjana Dokmanovic, WCDHR, Serbia–Montenegro
4.4Central America: Sandra Ramos, Movimiento de Mujeres Trabajadoras ‘María Elena Cuadra’, Nicaragua
4.5Discussion
5Food for thought from yesterday’s discussion: Women’s human rights as terms of reference for women’s struggles for social and gender justice
Christa Wichterich, NRO–Frauenforum, Germany
6Working group sessions: Presentations and discussion
6.1What next post-Cancún, pre-Hong Kong? How to confront the WTO regime – reform, engender, derail?
Elke Grawert, facilitator
6.2The Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals: How to defend the progress made? How to move forward?
Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos, facilitator
6.3EU development and trade policies: Between corporate interest and sustainable development
Maeve Taylor, facilitator
6.4Social fora: Feminist perspectives in the social justice movements – integration, alliances and autonomy
Eilish Dillon, facilitator
7Strategic responses and recommendations from the workshops to WIDE
8Closing session
8.1Conference observations from four wise women
Judith Wedderburn, Emma Greengrass, Everse Ruhindi, Krishna Kumari Shrestha
8.2Concluding words
Gisela Dütting, Brigitte Holzner
APPENDICES
1Conference programme
2Conference participants
3Notes on speakers
4Message from Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany
ACRONYMS & ABBREVIATIONS
NB: This list does not contain the names of familiar UN organisations.
ACPAfrica, Caribbean and Pacific
BPFABeijing Platform for Action
BMZGerman Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
CAFRACaribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action
CAPCommon Agricultural Policy
CEDAWConvention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
CEECentral and Eastern Europe(an)
CESCR[UN] Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
CGTNCaribbean Gender and Trade Network
CHR[UN] Commission on Human Rights
CLADEMComité de América Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer
CPRcivil and political rights
CSOcivil society organisation
CSPCountry Strategy Paper
CSW[UN] Commission on the Status of Women
DAWDepartment for the Advancement of Women
DAWNDevelopment Alternatives with Women in a New Era
DfIDDepartment for International Development [UK]
EPAEconomic Partnership Agreement
EPZexport processing zone
ESCReconomic, social and cultural rights
ESFEuropean Social Forum
EZLNEjército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
FAOFood and Agriculture Organization
FDIforeign direct investment
FfDFinancing for Development
FTAfree trade area
FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas
GATSGeneral Agreement on Trade in Services
GMgenetically modified
GNPgross national product
HLMhigh-level meeting
ICPDInternational Conference on Population and Development
IFIsinternational financial institutions
IGTNInternational Gender and Trade Network
ILC International Labour Conference
ILOInternational Labour Organization
IMFInternational Monetary Fund
IPECInternational Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour
LDCsleast developed countries
MDGsMillennium Development Goals
NAFTANorth American Free Trade Agreement
NAMAnon-agricultural market access
NGOnon-governmental organisation
NIPNational Indicative Programme
NIS newly independent states
NSAnon-state actor
OASOrganization of American States
ODAofficial development assistance
OECD/DACOrganisation for Economic Cooperation and Development / Development Assistance Committee
OSCEOrganization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
PRSPPoverty Reduction Strategy Paper
REPEMWomen’s Popular Education Network
SAPsstructural adjustment programmes
SIASustainability Impact Assessment
TNCstransnational corporations
VAWviolence against women
WBWorld Bank
WSFWorld Social Forum
WTOWorld Trade Organization
INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY
F
or this year’s Annual Conference WIDE returned to Bonn, where 157 participants from 33 countries gathered to exchange ideas, experiences and strategies. As in 2003, the participants were an ebullient mix of first-time attendees and familiar faces. With some self-styled ‘WIDE dinosaurs’ and many young women from so many countries and cultures, the conference bubbled with energy and wisdom, intellectual riches and a keen sense of commitment, struggle and anger in the face of hegemonic capitalism, militarism and fundamentalisms.
The conference was preceded by a capacity-building day, which consisted of four seminars turning women’s eyes on the World Trade Organization (WTO); poverty eradication and the roles of poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); the trade and development policies of the European Union (EU); and the key UN instruments for gender equality, the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA).
Next year, 2005, is an important moment for all those involved in struggles for social and gender justice and equitable, sustainable development. It marks the tenth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (and the 30th anniversary of the first UN women’s conference in Mexico, 1975), the fifth anniversary of the Millennium Summit, and the tenth anniversary of the creation of the WTO. Not surprisingly, then, much of the input and discussion at WIDE’s 2004 conference looked forward to 2005 and the events and processes that will be reviewing progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and in implementing commitments to the BPFA, and to how the international women’s movement, and WIDE in particular, can take part in them most effectively.
After welcomes to Bonn (by Birgit Dederichs-Bain, chair of the NRO-Frauenforum, the host organisation) and to the conference (by WIDE chair Brigitte Holzner), Dr Ursula Schäfer-Preuss of Germany’s federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development gave a short address and conveyed a message from the Minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul. Keynote speaker Devaki Jain gave an inspiring and closely woven account setting new developments and trends in feminist strategies and alliances in their historical context. She noted that the engagement with trade and macroeconomic issues and institutions reflects a change in the feminist analysis of inequality and rights and a change in approaches to policy making; but also that rights themselves are ripe for rearticulation – perhaps from the bottom up – in response to the fast-changing global landscape.
The challenges involved in rethinking rights were then explored in a panel, ‘Beyond equal rights – political concepts and perspectives’, in which speakers unpacked developmentalism as a vision of the world, analysed the challenge for feminists of engagement with the new social justice movements, and gave telling case studies of how women’s struggles for their rights intersect with liberation struggles and indigenous struggles. The afternoon’s panel, recounting regional experiences from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Central America, neatly illustrated the articulation between ‘local’ and global women’s struggles, and offered timely reminders of the areas – and the regions – where the most basic women’s rights cannot be taken for granted but must be continuously struggled for.
Christa Wichterich opened the second day’s proceedings with a thought-provoking summary of the previous day’s learnings, which fed into the four workshop sessions which followed. The aim of these was to devise strategies or strategic orientations to guide WIDE’s work over the coming period, and particularly in the run-up to the anniversaries and review processes mentioned above.
- Workshop 1, facilitated by Elke Grawert, reviewed the present moment in international trade negotiations, between the Cancún and Hong Kong WTO meetings, aiming to formulate a WIDE position on WTO negotiations and to devise advocacy and campaign strategies for ensuring the monitoring of international and regional trade processes.
- Workshop 2, facilitated by Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos, began by asking whether feminists should opt out of the Beijing and MDG processes and, if not, how best to engage with them and try to influence them? In particular, the workshop identified women’s specific competences in this respect and looked for alternatives that the women’s movement could propose.
- Workshop 3, facilitated by Maeve Taylor, focused on the European dimension. The presentations unpacked the complicated dynamic between EU trade, development, and gender policies and recent developments in EU trade policy in the context of WTO policy.
- Workshop 4, facilitated by Eilish Dillon, looked at the relationship of the international women’s/feminist movement with the social justice movements, what accommodations feminists can or must make with the social movements while maintaining their own identity and terrains of struggle. Strategies were directed particularly towards the next WSF and ESF.
As the final session on strategic responses and recommendations to WIDE (see section 7, below) shows, the conference participants drew up a rich array of strategic directions for WIDE and its national platforms to consider when planning their forthcoming work. Although the strategies and directions put forward were very varied, there was broad agreement on the need to build and diversify alliances, to clarify WIDE’s own political positions, strengths, specific competences and ‘bottom lines’ in different alliances and advocacy arenas, and to raise awareness about international and regional policy processes through sensitisation, demystification and economic literacy promotion.
But there were also two very important concepts underlying the strategising, and highlighted again and again by speakers and in discussion: diversity and coherence.
The challenge of recognising diversity is one of the thorniest the international women’s/feminist movement faces as it takes its place in the global groundswell of organised social protest and mobilisation. We recognise that women must be everywhere, and that, as Gina Vargas pointed out:
‘Struggles against exclusion and for economic justice, and struggles for global justice and against neoliberal hegemony, struggles for the politics of the body and struggles for the recognition of diversities and dialogue between them – these are all sites of advocacy and proposal for movements of women and feminists and for many other spaces and movements of democratic civil society.’
But there is a continuing history of women’s demands and women’s rights being at best postponed and at worst drowned when women’s movements join in larger movements (national liberation struggles, the labour movement, etc.). Even at the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai, as Devaki Jain found,
‘Reports of the experience of women, and their intersections with other global resistance coalitions ... provide a closeup of the wall, the external, impenetrable power domains, held by men and conventional political ideas, as well as the difficulties inside the “women’s tent” in finding common ground’.
We need to pay attention to the need to balance unity and diversity, especially as our struggles for gender justice take us into the wider social movements – as Gina warned, a disputed terrain, like the globalisation it opposes, but one that we must enter. We need to recognise and celebrate the diversity among women, in order to build unity among women. At the same time, we must be able to engage actively with the broader social movements while not losing our identity and autonomy as women’s movement. The concept of articulation was found useful in discussion to define this process of building unity-in-diversity.
As its title promised, this conference unpacked and analysed the gaps in coherence between different UN instruments (those for trade, those for ‘development’, those for women) and different EU instruments (ditto). We looked at the contradictions between the MDGs and the Beijing Platform. We saw that where there is coherence, it is often not the kind that promotes the observance of rights. As Carol Barton noted, the international financial institutions, increasingly coordinated through a ‘coherence’ agenda, have the power to determine aid, credit and trade, and thus to effectively write national economic policies in ways that directly undermine not only the Beijing platform but even the MDGs. We must ask: Can women’s rights be put meaningfully into practice when the international human and women’s rights framework is not incorporated into policies on trade and development – and, even more importantly, into their implementation?
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1WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
1.1Birgit Dederichs-Bain, NRO-Frauenforum Chair
D
ear friends, welcome to Bonn!
As chair of the NGOWomen's Forum and its project office WOMNET, it is a great pleasure to host this year's WIDE Annual Conference, which will deal with the crucial issue of the globalisation of women's rights. Having the WIDE conference in Bonn again is just another manifestation of the longstanding relationship between the NGOWomen's Forum and WIDE.
I shall be very brief, since it is my task here to prepare the floor for the representative of the German Development Minister, Dr Ursula Schäfer-Preuss, and then our keynote speaker, Devaki Jain. Therefore let me just say that I hope the lively spirit of yesterday's capacity building day will be carried over to these two conference days which we will spend together, and that we will part feeling enlightened, enriched, and also with the feeling of having had some fun!
It is a great honour to welcome as keynote speaker Devaki Jain, ‘La Grande Dame’, not only of the Indian, but of the international women's movement, who will shortly give us an introduction to the conference theme. Having a background both as a development economist and as an activist, Devaki has always searched for new ways and perspectives for the women's movement and has been among those who have shaped its strategies. In 2000 she delivered the key note speech to the Beijing+5 NGO Forum in New York, where she suggested that to mark Beijing+10 the international women's movement should look for new ways -- outside the conventional spaces and the UN -- to allow for the development of new ideas, for instance by forming a council of ten Wise Women. (Looking at our conference agenda it seems to me that WIDE has already taken up that suggestion!)
Devaki will talk to us about women's rights between the UN human rights framework and free trade agreements, and will – I am sure – set the path and the scope for our conference with her inspiring nature.
Once again, welcome to you all!
1.2Brigitte Holzner, WIDE Chair
D
ear participants, dear speakers, dear organisers, dear members of WIDE,
I cordially welcome you to WIDE’s 2004 Annual Conference, which has the theme Globalising women’s rights: confronting unequal development between the UN rights framework and the WTO trade agreements.
WIDE is a transnational network of gender specialists, women active in non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs), and human rights activists. WIDE was formed in 1985 in response to the Forward-Looking Strategies at the 3rd UN World Conference on Women, held in Nairobi, and next year will be celebrating its 20th anniversary. WIDE aims to articulate the relevance of the principles of gender equality and justice to the development process through research, documentation, information, dissemination, capacity building, advocacy and networking, and the organization of conferences like this one. The articulation of these principles of gender equality and justice are important for confronting policies we wish to see changed, and are a guideline for the formulation of better policies, as they are ethical principles that direct research and advocacy.
You know that for several years we have been concentrating on issues of gender and trade. Our economic literacy programme is well on its way, and our training manual is being reworked at the moment in order to incorporate new developments regarding trade agreements and new feminist thinking about the complexity of economic dynamics.
An important result of our work is our range of publications, such as the bulletins, briefing papers and information sheets, which help activists and lobbyists and also students and academics. Last year we published three WIDE bulletins, based on the annual conference and two consultations (one about the implications for transnational feminism of Europe’s move to the right, and one about EU accession and gender equality); a critical position paper discussing the EU’s position in the WTO negotiations; and several briefing papers (subjects included the social fora, the Public Eye on Davos, Sustainability Impact Assessments (SIAs) and EU trade policies, GATS and especially water privatisation, the implementation of the BPFA, and the 47th session of the Commission on the Status of Women). In addition, we have produced a series of information resources about gender equality and EU accession providing an analysis of the current situation of women in Bulgaria, Poland and Czech Republic.
A conference is an important opportunity to learn, to network and to set out future action and cooperation. This year’s conference has the following objectives:
- to inform about UN and WTO agreements and the contradictions and dilemmas they create for women’s rights;
- to clarify the current situation of the WTO after the ministerial in Cancún and before Beijing+10;
- to redefine or develop positions vis-à-vis development concepts, economic policies, multilateral players and alternative perspectives, and
- to work out concrete proposals for WIDE’s future work and inspire action, advocacy and political strategies for intervention in the EU and multilateral agendas.
As usual, our conference agenda is an ambitious one, and a relevant one. I want to address here two aspects of that relevance: the relevance of maintaining a human rights perspective, and the relevance of strategizing. We are seeing, especially during the past year, not only continuous threats to human rights as a result of war and armed conflict, but also worrying attempts to redefine human rights: a war is phrased as human rights delivery, and what has been formulated so beautifully in CEDAW as a comprehensive spectrum of women’s rights is now thinned down to the Millennium Development Goal of gender equality and empowerment (MGD 3) with the meagre indicators of ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary, and tertiary education; ratio of literate females to males among 15- to 24-year-olds; share of women in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector and proportion of seats held by women in national parliament. I fear that human rights are being ridiculed, downsized, their ‘protection’ outsourced to the military – and we know what this leads to – and that in the end the social contract between the citizen and the state no longer guarantees lifelong entitlements but suffers the fate of neoliberalism – the breaking up of secure labour contracts into temporary, informal, unaccountable agreements. We are seeing a deterioration of human rights; for instance the requirement that migrants should not marry under the age of 25 as proposed in some European countries, or the deregulation of the right to privacy when airlines give their information about passengers, even what food they eat, to the FBI.