Among the 35,000 plus women gathered in Beijing and Huairou in September 1995, ten were from The Feminist Majority. Here are on-site accounts that Feminist Majority Delegation members posted on The Feminist Majority Foundation Online throughout the conference. |
September 12, 1995 - Elizabeth Spahn, FMF Special Correspondent
Major Platform Gains for Young Women Young women scored major gains at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing Tuesday. Widespread agreement in the international community centered on the rights of girls and teenagers to say not to incest, date rape, sexual harassment, and other forms of sexual exploitation.
Genital Mutilation, Child Marriage Condemned In a major victory for girls, the international community agreed that the practice of female genital mutilation, common in some of the Islamic portions of Africa, is harmful to the health of girls. The practice is widespread in Sudan and Egypt, where it is estimated that as many as 80% of the girls are mutilated. It is believed to be common in many other Islamic countries.
Child marriage, where girls as young as 10 years old are married off by greedy fathers anxious to obtain dowry payments given for their daughters, were also condemned. Early marriage is very detrimental to the health of girls and young teenagers. The condemnation by the international conference underscored the importance of eradicating these practices. These practices occur in some African cultures, as well as some cultures in Southeast Asia, such as Nepal, where girls are sometimes sold to sex traffickers by their fathers.
For the first time, an international conference condemned son preference, which give boys the first and the best opportunity to eat, whatever food is available, pays for boys' access to professional medical services, and encourages boys but not girls to become educated. Approximately twice as many girls under the age of four die of malnutrition as boys, for example, in Bangladesh. Females are about 70% of the illiterate people, and in some societies more than half the females cannot read or write letters or numbers.
Girls' Rights to Privacy, Respect and Confidentiality Affirmed Conference delegates agreed to compromise provisions defining the appropriate role for parents in matters involving their daughters' access to health services and education. The Vatican, conservative Islamic countries such as Sudan, and the Vatican-allies such as Malta pressured the conference to adopt language which would create new parental "rights" over girls.
Women's and children's advocates sought language which would encourage parental "guidance and support in light of the evolving capacity of the child." This language is drawn from an earlier U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. It recognizes that a child of two or three requires much more parental guidance than a young woman of sixteen.
Three days of closed negotiations in a contact group led by Canada's Ruth Archibald resulted in compromise language that included both phases. Children's advocates were relieved that the language emphasized the "best interests of the child" and limited the ability of parents to force child marriage, female genital mutilation or sale of daughters to sex traffickers.
The compromise language also emphasized girls' rights to respect, privacy and confidentiality in health services. This is particularly important where the girl is being sexually abused by a family member, and in light of the dangers of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Conservative forces had originally inserted the parental "rights" language in 22 paragraphs within the document. The compromise language will appear just twice, once in the health section and once in the girl child section. It will be referred to in about six other paragraphs.
Girls' Inheritance Rights Debated The sole issue remaining in the section on girls involves the right of girls to inherit equally with their brothers. In an impassioned plea the well respected ambassador from Egypt, Mervat Tallwv, explained that under Islamic law girls only inherit 1/2 of what their brothers receive. this practice arises through Islamic law which requires males to economically provide for their female relatives. Tallwv acknowledged that the Islamic law is often not followed and that many men do not provide adequate support for their female relatives. She said that the solution was to enforce Islamic law through "equal access" to inheritance, not to institute secular law requiring equal inheritance rights for girls and women.
Zambia, on behalf of the Sub-Saharan African countries, stood firm on the concept of "equal" rather than "equitable" inheritance rights for girls. In non Islamic sub-Saharan Africa, widows do not inherit upon the death of their husband. Under customary law, the widow herself is inherited by the deceased husband's brother, and removed from her home and land. The widow is forced to marry the brother, and to provide sexual and domestic services. Zambia advocated rejecting these practices.
This problem had surfaced at the African preparatory committee meeting in Dakar, Senegal. It was referred yesterday to a closed contact group committee meeting for resolution. Most knowledgeable observers were pessimistic about consensus on this issue given the serious economic impact it would have on both Islamic and sub-Saharan African counties.
Landmark Focus on Rights of Girls The inclusion of a separate and comprehensive section on the rights of girls and young women is a major advance in international understanding. The problems of the "girl child", as the issue is described, arose in the earlier UN Conference on Human Rights (Vienna) and on Population (Cairo), where a separate section on the girl child was included at the insistence of the African members.
Inclusion of the girl child section in the Beijing conference on Women was led by the African women through their preparatory committee meeting in Dakar, Senegal. Although the European Union and some other North countries initially resisted a separate section for girls, arguing that it would open the floodgates to each special interest group requiring their own section, by the New York preparatory committee meeting the idea was accepted.
The areas still requiring work on behalf of girls are mainly centered in economic issues such as the inheritance rights problem, and international laws and standards governing child labor, much of which is provided by young girls.
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