World Summit on Sustainable Development Department of Public Information - News and Media Services Division - New York
	Johannesburg, South Africa 26 August-4 September 2002	27 August 2002

PRESS CONFERENCE BY WOMEN’S CAUCUS   "Do not deviate from Rio and do not spend 10 days rehashing what was agreed 10 years ago,” a member of the Women’s Caucus urged today at a Summit press conference entitled “Women Speak Out on Rights, Health and Land”, adding that a Summit that was supposed to be about poverty eradication and sustainable development must take seriously gender equality, or its goals would not be met. June Zeitlin of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization was joined by: Mary Ssonka of Action Aid Uganda, Uganda Land Alliance and the Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty, and Zonibel Woods of Action Canada for Population and Development. The Caucus wanted to press its demands at the outset and make clear that the laudable goals desired at the Summit could not be achieved without women’s active participation, Ms. Zeitlin said. Yesterday, the Caucus launched the Women’s Action Agenda for a Healthy and Peaceful Planet, which address the following five goals: peace and human rights; economic justice; equitable access to and use of resources; environmental security; and governance, whereby women would comprise 50 per cent of the decision-makers at all levels of government. Ms. Woods expressed concern about the lack of commitment to some of the agreements reached at the United Nations conferences of the 1990s, which included a strong commitment to sexual and reproductive rights and health for women, men and adolescents. At the most recent United Nations special session on children, held just ahead of the Summit’s preparatory meeting in Bali, there was a “real attack” on those rights. Since then, she had been trying to ensure that the commitments made at previous global conferences were respected. A particular concern here, she said, was the section in the outcome text on health, and the lack of balanced language on human rights, especially in the context of religious, cultural and national laws and customs. So far, gender analysis and a real commitment to ensuring recognition of women’s role in sustainable development were absent in the text. Without them, it would be impossible to do what “little” the governments were committing to at the Summit. Turning to land rights, Ms. Ssonka said she was here to make one last plea for women, namely to guarantee their human rights and their right to inherit land. In one case study she cited from her country of Uganda, an 87-year-old woman who had lost both her husband and son, also subsequently lost her land. It was sold without even consulting her. Such cases were happening daily in her country, and that was why she was here. She proposed that the paragraph on land rights in the outcome document should read: “Promote and support policies and programmes and initiatives to ensure equitable access to land and secure tenure and clarify resources rights and responsibilities, through land and tenure reform processes which respect the rule of law and to provide access to credit to all, especially to women, enable economic and social empowerment and poverty eradication as well as efficient and ecologically sound utilization of land and enable women producers to become decision-makers and owners in the sector, including the right to inherit land.” Responding to criticism that opening the document would set a precedent and allow all other parts to be re-opened, Ms. Woods said that was hypocritical. The United States delegation, for example, had had no trouble asking for other parts of the text to be reopened after receiving marching orders from its capital. The conference could not pick and choose; it should treat everyone’s concerns equally. Asked to elaborate on the meaning of gender analysis, Ms. Zeitlin explained that that was a term used when applying a “gender lens” to different issues. On land issues, for example, a gendered analysis would ask how a particular provision was affecting men and women differently. Unless their different experiences were understood, it would not be possible to evolve policies to meet their needs. Of particular concern to the women’s movement had been the policies of the current United States administration, which had continuously attacked women’s sexual and reproductive health, not only in the United States, but internationally, Ms. Woods said. Among her examples were the introduction of the global “gag rule”, which attacked the right of women in other countries to receive information about their sexual and reproductive health options, and the recent cut in funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which provided sexual and reproductive health services and information. She thanked her European colleagues, particularly the European Commission, for making up for that United States’ “shortfall”. Ms. Zeitlin added that the United States administration had gone to war in Afghanistan, in part, to achieve women’s rights and distinguish itself from those Taliban polices relating to Afghan women. At same time, it was waging a war on women’s rights in United Nations forums and around the world, through the cutting of funding for UNFPA and the global gag rule. Speaking as an American woman, she wished to say that American women as a whole were very concerned and seeking to expose the hypocrisy between what was said in public and what happened in private. Press Conferences Summit News