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7 JUNE 2000

Thirty-seven speakers are scheduled to address the General Assembly today -- the third day of its twenty-third Special Session on “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”.

Governments continue their review and appraisal of the progress made towards women’s advancement by implementing the Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995.  The Journal lists the names and titles of all the speakers.

The two Working Groups of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole have scheduled four meetings each for today, as they continue negotiating the outcome document, which Governments will adopt at the conclusion of the Special Session, on Friday, 9 June.  The document is entitled “Further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action” (document A/S-23/2/Add. 2, Parts I to IV).

Working Group I is dealing with three areas: part I, the  “Introduction”; part II, on “Achievements and obstacles in the implementation of the 12 critical areas of the Platform for Action”; and part III, on “Current challenges affecting the full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action”.  Working Group II has responsibility for part IV of the document, on “Actions and initiatives to overcome obstacles and to achieve the full and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action”.

Reporting on the work, the Chairperson of the Ad Hoc Committee, Ms. Christine Kapalata (United Republic of Tanzania), said that yesterday Working Group I reached agreement on paragraph 31, dealing with science and technology.  Movement had been slower than the day before, she said, but there was progress.  Delegations were no longer bracketing paragraphs, reserving that only for the most difficult issues.

There had not been much movement in Working Group II on part IV, Ms. Kapalata said.  However, by yesterday afternoon, delegations had reached agreement on a further 12 paragraphs relating to the role of the family, agreeing to retain 6 of the 12 paragraphs and to delete six others.
 

On the racks today is part of the draft report of the Ad Hoc Committee (document A/S-23/AC.1/L.1/Add.1).  It contains amendments, as approved by the Committee, to part IV of the outcome document.

In the Contact Group, agreement had been reached on paragraph 30, dealing with globalization and the agreed target of 0.7 per cent ODA, she said.

Thursday, 5 p.m. was the deadline for the Ad Hoc Committee to finish its work, the Chairperson said, and delegations were being urged to work frantically to complete the document.

In addition to presiding over this morning’s Special Session, the President, Dr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, met, at 11 a.m., with the Chairmen of the Regional Groups.  He is meeting, at 12:30 p.m., with the Secretary-General.  The President is invited to attend, at 6 p.m., an awards benefit reception hosted by Public-Private Partnerships for Women’s Health; to a reception, at 6:15 p.m., hosted by Ambassador Yukio Satoh, in honour of the Japanese delegation to the Special Session; and to a dinner in his honour, hosted by the Permanent Observer of Switzerland, Ambassador Jeno C.A. Staehelin.