Preface

In 1975, International Women's Year, the first world conference on women was held in Mexico City. This conference launched the UN Decade for Women, which was marked at its midpoint and conclusion by world conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985) respectively. In September 1995, China hosted the UN Fourth World Conference on Women. The Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women to the Year 2000 (NFLS), an outcome of the 1985 conference, and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (PFA)1 from the 1995 conference contain a series of globally agreed-upon recommendations for achieving gender equality. Now, a five-year review of the NFLS and the PFA is scheduled as a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly from 5-9 June 2000.

The UN world conferences on women were important catalysts and rallying cries in the struggle for women's rights. Other UN world conferences have attracted the attention and energy of women's organizations and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These included the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, the World Conference on Human Rights (WCHR) in 1993, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in 1994, the World Summit for Social Development (WSSD) in 1995, and the UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) in 1996. NGO interest in influencing these conferences and their ability to do so have gained strength successively from conference to conference.

The original version of this booklet (Putting Gender on the Agenda: A Guide to Participating in UN World Conferences, 1995) was written prior to the Fourth World Conference on Women as a guide for those who were attending preparatory meetings and UN world conferences for the first time. It was written with the hope of contributing to the growing impact of advocates for women's rights in the intergovernmental arena. In order to interact effectively with the international policy-setting and decision-mak-ing processes that UN world conferences represent, it is important to understand the relevant procedures and processes. We believe that the thousands of copies of this pub-lication that were requested from all parts of the world attest to its relevance.

We are now in an era of five-year reviews of world conferences. The five-year reviews of UNCED, WCHR, ICPD and SIDS have already taken place. Five-year reviews of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the World Summit for Social Development are taking place in 2000 and the five-year review of Habitat II will occur in 2001.

This booklet describes how five-year reviews are organized as inter-governmental assessment processes, explains the various mechanisms and preparatory processes that may lead to a five-year review, and provides ideas on how both non-governmental and governmental participants may enhance their participation. This publication is a col-laborative venture of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) and is also available electronically on the UNIFEM website. Both UNIFEM and UN-NGLS are actively involved in supporting the participa-tion of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United Nations, but from different perspectives and with different constituencies and institutional responsibilities. The undertaking of this booklet has enabled us to pool our experiences and insights with a view to facilitating and strengthening the participation of women's rights advocates--whether from NGOs or governments--to advance the gender agenda.

Acknowledgements

The first version of this booklet, entitled Putting Gender on the Agenda: A Guide to Participating in UN World Conferences, was published in 1995. Invaluable feedback was received from numerous development partners and women's organizations.

This publication, entitled Gender on the Agenda: A Guide to Participating in Beijing +5, has been enriched by the comments received since the initial publication. We hope it also expresses the gains that have been made in putting--and keeping--gender on the UN agenda as we approach the five-year review of the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the document agreed to at the Fourth World Conference on Women.

Gender on the Agenda: A Guide to Participating in Beijing +5 has been revised and edited by Barbara Adams (UN-NGLS), and Susana T. Fried and Joanne Sandler (UNIFEM). Invaluable insight and keen eyes were contributed by Stella Arthur, Joslyn Barnes and Abigail Neville (UN-NGLS), along with Gretchen Sidhu and Rosemary Kalapurakal (UNIFEM). Marisa Kohan (UNIFEM) has played the critical role of redesigning and producing this version for electronic dissemination. We are also grateful to the many individuals who contributed directly with comments and critiques.