WOM/BEI/18 Main Committee 5 September 1995 1st Meeting (AM) WORLD CONFERENCE'S MAIN COMMITTEE BEGINS WORK NEGOTIATING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES IN ITS DRAFT FINAL DOCUMENTS The Main Committee of the Fourth World Conference on Women, the body charged with negotiating agreement on still-contentious aspects of the draft Declaration and Platform for Action of the Beijing Conference, began its work this morning under the chairmanship of Patricia Licuanan (Philippines), elected to the post yesterday at the Conference's opening meeting. In finalizing the texts of the Declaration (which is still to be negotiated in its entirety) and the Platform for Action, the Committee will have the support of two working groups established yesterday in its plenary meeting. The Main Committee and its working groups have two documents before them. The first (document A/CONF.177/L.1) incorporates the elements of the Conference Declaration and its draft Platform for Action, drafted by the Conference Secretariat on the basis of contributions from the five regional group meetings, consultations with the institutions of the United Nations system, and informal consultations held in December 1994, and modified by the Commission on the Status of Women. The second document (A/CONF.177/L.3) incorporates amendments to the draft Platform for Action, decided on at informal consultations of the Commission held recently in New York. Working Group I, chaired by Nana Ama Yeboa (Ghana), will consider sections of the draft Platform for Action dealing with inequalities in access to health and related services; inequality in access to communications systems, especially the media; and discrimination against and violation of the rights of the child. Working Group I will also consider Chapter V of the draft platform (institutional arrangements for implementation); Chapter I (the mission statement); Chapter II (the global framework); and Chapter III (critical areas of concern). Working Group II, chaired by Irene Freudenschuss-Reichl (Austria), will consider the preamble and sections of the draft platform concerning strategic objectives and actions; the (more) Main Committee - 2 - Press Release WOM/BEI.181st Meeting (AM) 5 September 1995 burden of poverty on women; violence against women; the reduction of the impact of armed or other conflict on women; inequality in women's access to and participation in the definition of economic structures and policies; inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making; insufficient mechanisms to promote the advancement of women; and women and the environment. Working Group II will also work on the Conference draft declaration. The working groups begin closed consultations this afternoon. In a review of the status of negotiations, Ms. Licuanan (Philippines), Main Committee Chairman, noted that the July-August consultations of the Commission on the Status of Women had successfully achieved agreement on nearly two-thirds of the platform text still in dispute. In the course of the morning's discussions, however, representatives engaged in what became an extended debate on the language of the various documents before it. The first major concern was the discrepancies arising between the wording of French and English texts before the Committee, particularly in the amendments to the Draft Platform for Action contained in document A/CONF.177/L.3. Those discrepancies, many speakers noted, would undoubtedly recur once reports were issued in the Organization's other languages. The representative of Benin further asserted that the United Nations was "turning into a one-language Organization". As far as his own delegation was concerned, no text could be definitively debated until it was available in French. Acknowledging that difficulties had inevitably arisen, given the tight time-frame governing the Conference, the Secretariat pointed out that most of the texts before the working groups were already contained in documents before it; any changes that emerged would be conveyed orally to the Committee and working groups; moreover, the results of Main Committee deliberations would eventually be available in all working languages. The second area of concern was whether language "borrowed" from earlier conferences and declarations on human rights and the rights of women should be regarded as sacrosanct, and incorporated as such into the final language adopted by the Conference. Some speakers argued that the exact wording of earlier conferences and declarations should be maintained, with due regard to the overall context and sequence in which it was originally formulated. Others held the view that the Conference should not be a mere glossary of previously agreed-on terminology: it should make its own contribution to the work of the United Nations, in its own language, and should not adhere to the terminology of past gatherings that had not always focussed exclusively on women's concerns. Other speakers argued that language incorporated from previous declarations should be seen only as a "conceptual framework" on which the present Conference should build. (more Main Committee - 3 - Press Release WOM/BEI.181st Meeting (AM) 5 September 1995 The Chairman said it was her understanding that delegates wished to support and build on previous conferences. New language was acceptable, but wherever there was a conflict she felt it would be advisable to use language agreed on in the past. However, specific points of linguistic detail could be hammered out in the working groups. Earlier this morning, the Main Committee elected, by acclamation, Irene Freudenschuss-Reichl (Austria), Natalia Drozd (Belarus) and Zelmira Regazoli (Argentina) as Vice-Chairmen and Selma Ashipala (Namibia) as Rapporteur. It also adopted its organization of work and the report of its contact group on use of the term "gender". The Main Committee will meet again at a date to be determined, to consider the recommendations of its working groups. * *** *