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9 June 2000

The General Assembly will conclude its twenty-third Special Session on Women later today, after adopting an outcome document calling on Governments to undertake further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action.  The document focuses on major areas and concerns that have emerged as priority items since the adoption of the Platform for Action at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, and in this context will update the Beijing Platform.

The document seeks to further strengthen the Platform in the areas of violence against women, trafficking in women health, education, human rights, poverty, debt and globalization, armed conflict, sovereignty, land and inheritance rights for women, political participation and decision making.

The debate continues this morning and afternoon in the plenary.   The Journal lists the names and titles of the speakers, although representatives of several of the UN bodies mentioned will now make their statements in the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole.

The two Working Groups of the Ad Hoc Committee are conducting final negotiations on the outcome document (A/S-23/2/Add. 2, Parts I to IV), having worked into the early hours of this morning.  According to the Chairperson of the Ad Hoc Committee, Ms. Christine Kapalata (United Republic of Tanzania), the Committee is “almost there”.  Only six paragraphs in part IV of the document remain to be agreed; elsewhere in the document, some important sticky issues are still pending.

For today, the Ad Hoc Committee will reconvene in informal consultations, at 12:30 p.m., to adopt the negotiated paragraphs, with a view to a formal meeting at 3 p.m.  At that time, the Committee will hear statements by UN organizations and a number of NGOs.  It will then adjourn for final consultations on the document, and will resume the formal meeting later to adopt the text.

The Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women, Ms. Yakin Erturk, then answered correspondents’ substantive questions about the final document of the Special Session.