PERMANENT OBSERVER MISSION
OF SWITZERLAND TO THE UNITED NATIONS
WOMEN 2000:
GENDER EQUALITY, DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE
FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Twenty-third Special Session of the General Assembly
STATEMENT
by
H.E. State Secretary Patricia
SCHULZDirector of the Federal Office for the Equality between Women
and Men
New York, June 9, 2000
Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am addressing you with mixed feelings almost at the end of this session. I have feelings of sadness, perplexity, joy and hope at the same time. We have had an opportunity in this process of Beijing + 5; have we taken advantage of it or have we wasted it?
First of all, sadness: five years after Beijing, some of the key points still remain very much disputed, specifically everything concerning the right of women to make independent decisions and concerning their human rights. We have had a lot of difficulty finding necessary compromises. We have not always succeeded, nor have we always understood each other. In spite of the decisions made before the extraordinary session, there has been attempts to reopen the Platform for Action and to move backwards with respect to our commitments made in Beijing. And yet, old problems remain and new problems have arisen, which require all of us to work harder. Women still do not enjoy full respect of their human rights. Violence is being expressed in all of its forms, in the banality and horror of domestic violence, in the banality and horror of the violence of the trafficking of human beings, and in the banality and horror of conflicts that shatter so many regions. HIV and AIDS are striking all the continents and particularly devastating the young population of Africa, destroying its future. Globalization and new technologies represent opportunities and risks. Unfortunately, we have not been able to minimize the risks and ensure that women profit more from the opportunities offered, all women and not just a privileged minority in northern countries. Poverty continues to have the face of a woman all too often, and the strategies for fighting it are far from sufficient. Everywhere, women have too little participation in decision-making. Their absence or under representation in all places of power implies that their needs and interests are not sufficiently taken into account. Institutional mechanisms - when they exist at all - in charge of achieving equality continue to lack the necessary resources to accomplish their task.
Now I would like to come to my second point, perplexity. I am perplexed by the considerable efforts that have been invested in the process of Beijing + 5. Has it been worth the effort? In Beijing, we adopted a demanding and visionary Platform for Action. Do we complete it sufficiently with the two new documents negotiated here? Are they sufficient, above all with respect to the actions to be taken, specially the actions dealing with the current challenges affecting the full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action ? It was clear for us that we could not accept anything less than what we agreed on in Beijing. We achieved the minimum, but what about all the other issues and those attempts of so many nongovernmental organizations that followed our work?
Following these questions, I would now like to talk about joy, the joy despite the tension and the frustration, which have marked many hours spent in this building. We have learned about everything that has happened over the past five years in the accounts presented to the General Assembly, in the accounts given in the parallel activities, and especially and above all in the meetings and discussions during the negotiations. In one place, the emphasis was put on the fight against violence, on the education of girls and women in another, or on participation in politics and professional life in a third. Indeed, it is not, it is never enough, but it is what we have done and what we have shared. This sharing also makes it possible for us to search and often find solutions and compromises that go beyond the borders of traditional negotiation groups. And it is the UN, this irreplaceable universal forum, which has made it possible for us to participate in this vital sharing despite whatever difficulties there have been to negotiations.
Of course, I would like to finish with hope. We are going to leave, all of us, to return to our countries, our organizations and our institutions. We are going to find ourselves, each one of us, faced with our own realities, but we will not be isolated. We have a common experience, we have contacts, networks, we can benefit from the experiences of different people, we can access common information, we have names and faces, and - above all - we have reaffirmed our common commitment made in Beijing. We know that the commitment to equality between women and men is the pivotal point for all commitment to social justice, the pivotal point for the fight for peace and against poverty. This commitment remains difficult and demands patient work, which is often thankless and invisible. It is obvious that we cannot address and accomplish this work successfully without collaborating closely with the nongovernmental organizations. They too have their networks, their names and their faces, and they are using the new technologies to become increasingly efficient. They accomplish their activities and their programs and never cease reminding us, the governments, of our responsibilities, to be faithful to the commitments that we have made. We would like to thank them at this time for their untiring commitment. May the Declaration and the Platform for Action adopted in Beijing, together with the political declaration and outcome document we have just completed, provide all of us with inspiration in the coming years. We know that a real policy of equality cannot be improvised. It requires precise skills and instruments that make it possible to measure whether the actions taken have been successful, and - above all -it requires a clear political will to be able to turn words into actions. It is our hope, but above all it is our responsibility to achieve this.
Thank you for your attention.