Reports 1995-1998 Edited by Dwain C. Epps

Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women

Letter to H.E. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the United Nations, 25 April 1995.

The World Council of Churches, through its Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, relates to and participates in the events organized by the United Nations and its various agencies. As an accredited non-governmental organization to ECOSOC in Category II, it has accordingly participated in major recent UN World Conferences at Rio, Vienna, Cairo and Copenhagen.

The Council in general and its Women’s Desk in particular, through its programme activities, is committed to the advancement of the status and rights of women. As such, it has decided to participate in the forthcoming UN sponsored World Conference on Women to be held in Beijing, September this year.

The purpose of participation in the conference, amongst others, is to interact with government delegates and put across the viewpoint of the churches. It is therefore with concern that we have received the news of the shifting of the NGO Forum to a complex twenty miles outside Beijing, away from the official meeting. This change in venue will make dialogue and interaction among official delegates and NGO representatives extremely difficult. In addition, the reports of denial of credentials for the conference to a large number of NGOs is also a matter of serious concern for us. We may in the circumstances be constrained to review the utility of our participation.

We therefore appeal to you to pursue all measures and initiatives within your means as the Secretary-General of the United Nations to insure an effective and meaningful participation of the NGO community at the Conference on Women in Beijing.

Yours sincerely,

Konrad Raiser

General Secretary

Statement presented to the press by the moderator of the CCIA as leader of the WCC delegation on behalf of church and ecumenical organizations,² Beijing, 4 September 1995.

The WCC facilitated the presence of some 50 women from around the world at the NGO Forum related to the UN World Conference, and sent an official five-member delegation to the World Conference itself. The ecumenical presence was facilitated by the Women’s Commission of the China Christian Council. This statement was intended for delivery at the Conference itself, but disallowed due to scheduling difficulties.

The World Council of Churches is joined in this statement by other global ecumenical organizations as well as a number of religious bodies present at the fourth World Conference on Women, all of which are listed at the end of the document.

The World Council of Churches is grateful to the members of the Preparatory Committee and the Secretary General for having ensured that this important gathering is being held and that it provides a comprehensive global agenda on issues relating to the life and livelihood of the women of the world. With 325 member churches of the Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox Christian traditions, located in every region of the world, the World Council of Churches is aware that these questions are urgent and complex. Only an approach that will link the empowerment of women with ensuring the quality of life for all citizens can offer hope to the millions of women in our world who are struggling for survival and dignity.

In 1988 the World Council of Churches launched a Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women, as a follow-up of the UN Decade for Women. This program has brought the WCC in close contact with the everyday lives of women and we have documented evidence of the various forms of violence women experience and the extent of this violence. It has been painful for us to acknowledge that institutions which should stand in solidarity with women, including governments and the churches, have not often responded with resolute action. We encounter, through our contact with women at the periphery of all our societies, the struggle for dignity and livelihood that women engage in every day.

One cause for the increase in incidents of violence against women is the global economic insecurity in which our families and societies exist. We believe that empowerment is not possible as long as women live in contexts of violence, often exacerbated by cultural and religious traditions. At Vienna it was acknowledged that women’s rights are human rights - we urge the immediate introduction of legal and institutional instruments to protect the human rights of women. Our particular concern is focused on the rights of migrant and refugee women, of women living under the yoke of racism and on the situation of Indigenous women who are often the targets of vicious violence.

The World Council of Churches comes to this World Conference to lift up the voices of those women who are often ignored. We believe that economic, political and social justice are prerequisites for the empowerment of women. Contrary to the widely held development ideology which emphasises that economic growth alone and by itself can improve the quality of life, we support and wish to raise here the views emphasised at the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen, according to which people should be at the centre of development. We also endorse the position taken in Copenhagen that empowering people, particularly women, to strengthen their own capacities is the main objective of development, and its principal resource.

Many in the member churches of the WCC will testify that the effects of foreign debts and structural adjustment programmes erode the traditional occupations and livelihood of women and result in increasing poverty and marginalisation of women both in rural and urban settings. Echoing again the World Summit on Social Development, we emphasise that structural adjustment programmes should be restructured to include social development goals, that they should include gender-sensitive social impact assessments. It should also be ensured that women do not have to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of the transition costs. We would add that in order to promote equality in all societies, it is important that steps are taken to recognise, count and value unwaged work - still typically women’s labour, in the home and in the community.

Of equal concern is the fact that women seem increasingly to be at the centre of the AIDS epidemic and more and more women are infected with the virus. The spread of HIV/AIDS is as much related to poverty and the subordinate status of women, as it is to the virus itself. We urge that more attention and resources be devoted to the care of people living with HIV/AIDS and its prevention, particularly in the context of the in-built gender discrimination in health care programmes. Governments should also ensure that women do not carry the entire burden for care of people living with HIV/AIDS.

We draw to the attention of the world community the liberating power of religions and we affirm the positive and supportive role that the churches and other religious institutions can play in standing in solidarity with those women who have to make ethical choices and decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive rights. But of equal concern to the World Council of Churches is the increasing religious extremism in all faiths and the deleterious consequences this has on women’s legal, political and social rights.

We remind our governments of all previous commitments made which are still far from implementation and are not even ratified by some governments. International instruments are sometimes not implemented because they do not respond to specific cultural and developmental needs. We therefore urge for more regional and national commitments and strategies that can be more realistically implemented.

We urge that special funding instruments be set up at the local, national and international levels so as to ensure enough resources to implement decisions made at this gathering for the empowerment of women.

As the World Council of Churches, through our member churches, we commit ourselves to monitoring the implementation of commitments made here in Beijing, to the women of the world. Thank you.