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UN Ambassador
[Speech]
Marjatta Rasi
Curriculum vitae
RASI, Satu Marjatta (Ms.)
Born 29 November 1945, Punkalaidun, Finland
Education LLB 1969, Helsinki University
2004 President of the
Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
2002 - 2003 Vice
President of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
2000 Member of the
Board; International Peace Academy
1 June 1998 → Permanent
Representative of Finland to the United Nations in New York
1995 Director General,
Department for International Development Cooperation,
Ministry for Foreign Affairs
1991 Ambassador of
Finland to New Delhi, Dhaka, Colombo, Kathmandu and Thimphu
Nordic Forum
lOth
Anniversary Seminar
Turku,
13 August 2004
Statement by Ambassador
Marjatta
Rasi
Permanent representative of Finland to the United Nations
"Women at the UN
-
From Mexico to the Millennium Summit and beyond"
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
It is an honour and a pleasure for me to be here to today, to address
the tenth anniversary seminar of the Nordic Forum. I have been asked
to talk about women at the United Nations
-
the work of the organisation related to women's
empowerment,
women's human rights, women and
development -
in short, the global women's agenda.
Let me say right at the outset that there could not be a better time
or place for us to discuss these matters than right now and right
here. At the United Nations and worldwide, preparations are currently
ongoing for the tenth anniversary of the Beijing World Conference on
Women and the Beijing Platform for Action, the blueprint for
international efforts for the advancement of women. The tenth
anniversary of Beijing will simultaneously mark the thirtieth
anniversary of the International Women's Year, 1975, and the first
World Conference on Women, held in Mexico that same year. Also, in a
years' time, heads of state and government will come together in New
York to examine the progress made in the implementation of the
Millennium Development Goals, agreed to in the year 2000. Only one of
those goals relates directly to women, but it is generally agreed that
progress towards that goal is a necessary precondition for the
attainment of all eight of them.
-
And still this autumn, we will be marking 25 years since the adoption
by the General Assembly of the
CEDAW
convention, the
Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against
Women. So it is indeed an exciting time to be working on these issues.
As far as our location and the occasion are concerned, I find these
very fitting as well. Without any exaggeration, it is safe to say that
the Nordic countries were instrumental in bringing women onto the UN
agenda, and in articulating the global commitments regarding women.
Even today, the Nordic and Baltic countries remain amongst the most
active proponents of the rights of women and of gender equality -
together with a great many other countries, I am happy to admit. The
global women's movement has its roots here, with us, and therefore we
have a special duty to see to its progress.
In the following, I would first like to give you a brief overview of
the history of women at the UN and then discuss a few topical issues
in more detail.
When thinking about women at the UN, the thoughts of all Finns turn
almost automatically to
Helvi Sipilä,
the first woman to hold the rank of
Assistant
Secretary-General at the UN,
and the driving force behind many of the early achievements of women
in the organisation.
Helvi Sipilä
invested some
twenty-odd
years of her life in the UN, first as
a government delegate, and later as a staff member. Her legacy
continues to be a source of inspiration and encouragement for all of
us, both at the UN and indeed here in Finland. I am sure that it was
not always easy for her to be the first woman to rise to the post of
Assistant
Secretary-General,
back in 1972. She once told me that at her time there
were only seven women in expert or managerial positions (principal
officer or higher) in the whole organisation. That meant less than
three per cent!
Helvi Sipilä
used to say that the UN "invented"
women only in the
mid-seventies.
Women, however,
had discovered the UN right from the start, from the San Francisco
conference in 1945. Women delegates in San Francisco saw to it that
the United Nations Charter, in its preamble, reaffirms not only
nations' "faith in fundamental human rights" and the "dignity and
worth of the human person", but also in the "equal rights of men and
women".
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women was established
in 1946, and as early as 1963 it started work on what was later to
become the
CEDAW
convention. The Commission together
with women activists also had a crucial role in drafting the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights between 1946 and 1948, making sure that
the reference to equal rights of men and women, already accepted in
the UN Charter, would also be included in the Universal Declaration.
In the end, member states voted on the inclusion of this phrase in the
declaration, with thirty-two in favour and two against
-
China and the United States
-
and three abstentions. So as you see, opinions differed on these
issues even in the early days.
Throughout the sixties, with a growing number of newly independent
developing countries joining the world organisation, development
issues gained in prominence on the UN agenda. The interests of the new
members were focused more on issues such as poverty, food production,
and the effects of population growth than on conventional political
and security issues. In was in tackling development that the UN
"discovered" women, and realised that addressing the situation of
women was key to solving problems as diverse as agricultural
production, environmental degradation, education, health and
population growth.
From the seventies onward, there was a real explosion of action. The
International Women's Year in 1975 acted as an engine for change for
women the world over. An
NGO
initiative at first, it was
enthusiastically embraced by
Helvi Sipilä
and her
colleagues, members of the Commission on the Status of Women at its
24th session in 1972. The Commission unanimously recommended to the
General Assembly the declaration of the year, and the General Assembly
complied, but without much enthusiasm. The global women's movement,
however, which had gained in strength and prominence throughout the
preceding decade, welcomed the proclamation keenly. In the end, the
success of the. year exceeded all expectations, and revealed the
potential of the UN system for the advancement of women on the global
scale.
The international year also proved a valuable tool with which the by
then newly appointed Assistant
Secretary-General
Helvi Sipilä
could justify her proposals for various measures aimed
at promoting the advancement of women in the UN system.
From the declaration of the year followed the decision endorsing the
first major UN conference on women, which was held in Mexico City in
1975. The World Plan of Action adopted by the conference crystallised
the objectives of the women's movement under the theme of equality,
development and peace
-
an overarching theme which has served also the following three world
conferences, in 1980 in Copenhagen, in 1985 in Nairobi, and in 1995 in
Beijing. From the beginning the three objectives were seen as
interrelated and mutually reinforcing, so that the advancement of one
contributes to the advancement of the others.
For the contemporary
audience, however, one crucial element seems to be missing from that
list of objectives: that of rights. As already mentioned, 25 years ago
the UN adopted what is today the
secondmost
widely ratified international human
rights instrument, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against Women. The convention does not imply any
specific rights for women, but seeks to ensure the equal enjoyment by
women of the rights guaranteed to them in the Universal Declaration
and the core human rights conventions. The very existence of the
CEDAW
convention is
proof of the fact that this equality in terms of actual enjoyment of
human rights is still far from achieved.
At the World
Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993, women's rights
were famously recognised as an inalienable, integral and indivisible
part of universal human rights. The Vienna Declaration and Programme
of Action also dealt extensively with a topic that had been overlooked
for decades
-
violence against women. Also, the International Conference on
Population and Development, held in Cairo in 1994, discussed the topic
of women's reproductive rights, on the basis of a definition contained
in the CEDAW
convention.
It was only the Beijing Platform for Action, however, that brought all
of these advances together into one comprehensive document and
consolidated the gains made. The Beijing Platform for Action sets
clear goals for the promotion and protection of the human rights of
women and girls, for advancing women's political participation, for
eliminating violence against women, for promoting women's economic
autonomy, for encouraging an equitable sharing of family
responsibilities
-
and the list goes on.
In fact, the Beijing conference endorsed a completely new concept and
school of thought, that of gender. This change of paradigm led to a
shift in focus from women to gender and the power relations between
women and men, and to the recognition that achieving gender equality
requires more than equality of access to resources
-
it requires a restructuring of social, political and economic
structures and institutions. Based on this recognition, the Beijing
conference adopted the by now famous
dual-track
approach to
advancing gender equality: On the one hand, mainstreaming a gender
perspective in all policies and programmes, and on the other,
specific, targeted actions aimed at improving the status of women in
all areas of life. Both the member states and the UN system committed
themselves unequivocally to implementing the mainstreaming approach in
all their actions.
The Beijing conference was deemed a great success at the time, but the
true value of its achievements has only really been grasped over the
last few years, as those achievements have come more and more under
attack. Some changes in the negotiating atmosphere were already
visible at the five-year review of the conference, held in 2000, but
it is especially over the last few years that the whole extent of the
"backlash" against the Beijing agenda has become clear. For several
years already it has been extremely difficult in the UN context
to refer to some detailed
commitments
included in the platform, and often
member states have come close to voting on language stemming directly
from the Beijing documents. This is particularly the case with issues
such as sexual and reproductive health and rights
(i.e.,
abortion), various forms of harmful customary practices (female
genital mutilation) and certain forms of violence against women
(honour crimes,
dowry-related violence). Also
questions surrounding marriage (early and forced marriages) and
domestic violence
(criminalisation
of marital
rape) are constant sources of disagreement in UN negotiations.
The controversy and disagreements surrounding women's reproductive and
sexual health and rights are particularly worrying because of the
growing impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic especially in Africa and Asia.
At a time when all possible solutions for combating the virus should
be explored openly and dispassionately and utilised to maximum effect,
some governments seem instead to be limiting the number of
alternatives available to them, both at home and in international
development cooperation programmes. The debates at the international
HIV/AIDS
conference held in Bangkok in July were a clear demonstration of these
divisions, and the impact of ideology on what one would assume to be
simple, practical considerations.
So it is clear that the preparations for the ten-year review and
appraisal of the Beijing platform are taking place at a particularly
challenging time. Ever since the March meeting of the Commission on
the Status of Women it has been clear that any attempts to negotiate a
new outcome document at the
Beijing+l0
event would
inevitably only lead to opening up and putting into question all the
achievements made ten years ago. With one member state opposed, even a
simple political declaration confirming those commitments is clearly
out of the question. Under the circumstances, the follow-up meeting,
to be held in March next year, will concentrate on reviewing the
country level implementation of the Platform for Action, and on
identifying good practices, main obstacles, and new and emerging
issues of relevance to the situation of women worldwide. Compared with
grand political statements this may sound commonplace, but over the
past few years, there has been a growing realisation throughout the
UN, that ordinary, hard work at the regional, country and local levels
is exactly what is needed after the great gains made on the political
level in the early 1990s. The slogan today is: implementation,
implementation, implementation. Given the very ambitious agenda agreed
to in Beijing, I think you will agree that there is still much left of
it to implement, even in our own countries, let alone on the global
level.
Since the major UN conferences of the 1990s and the consolidation of
their outcomes in the Millennium Declaration, attention at the UN
level in general has been focused on translating political commitments
into concrete actions, on the
country-level
implementation of these actions, and
on improving monitoring and follow-up of the progress made. The UN has
adopted what is called an integrated and coordinated approach to
conference follow-up, based on an understanding that the goals of the
various global conferences are interrelated and mutually reinforcing.
The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs)
was an attempt to summarise, in clear
and precise format, some of the key targets and indicators to measure
progress towards them
-
in other words, to create a road map for reaching the aims of the
Millennium Declaration.
As far as gender equality is concerned, it is included in the
MDGs as goal number three,
with the target set at eliminating gender disparities in primary and
secondary education by 2005 and at all levels by 2015. It is clearly
understood, however, and explicitly spelled out in the Millennium
Declaration, that gender equality is to be seen not only as a goal in
its own right, but an essential ingredient for achieving all
MDGs,
be it poverty eradication,
environmental protection or access to health care. Attempting to meet
the MDGs
without
incorporating gender equality will both increase the costs and
minimize success.
As already mentioned, the progress of the implementation of the
MDGs will be examined in the
autumn of 2005, in a high level event to be held in conjunction with
the opening of the 60th session of the General Assembly. One of the
tasks of the
Beijing+l0 event of next
spring, therefore, will be to provide input to the
MDG
review. The task of all member
states, on the other hand, is to make sure that gender perspectives
are duly mainstreamed in the examination of all
MDGs.
Before
closing, I would like to briefly highlight a few issues that we, the
Nordic and Baltic countries have identified as some of the "emerging
issues" that require increased attention in the future. None of the
issues are entirely new, but for one, they are all multifaceted
problems that concern developing and developed countries alike. Also,
they are issues where international dialogue, despite the current
climate, has been seen to bring results. I notice that they are for
the most part also issues that in one form or another are included on
the agenda of this Forum
-
namely, gender mainstreaming, violence against women, trafficking and
the role of women in questions of peace and security.
Firstly, gender mainstreaming. As mentioned earlier, the
concept of gender mainstreaming made its breakthrough at the Beijing
conference, and has since then had a profound effect on the way gender
equality issues are examined both at the global and the national
level. I think it is safe to say that the endorsement given to the
gender approach was one of the achievements of Beijing that has had
the most impact in our own countries, with gender impact assessments
being conducted for new legislation and with the first tangible
progress being made in terms of gender budgeting. This is quite an
accomplishment, given the complexity of the concept and the sometimes
misleading terminology in our national languages.
No wonder then, that at the global level, the difficulties encountered
have been quite daunting. Through international cooperation and the
incorporation of the approach in multilateral and bilateral
development programmes, progress is however being made. At Beijing,
the UN system, together with the member states, committed itself to
applying the gender perspective in all its policies and programmes.
When the achievements of the UN in this regard were evaluated this
summer by the Economic and Social Council, the results were found to
be generally positive, especially in the areas of the internal
planning and administration of the system. In field level work, UN
staff members encounter similar problems our civil servants used to
(or maybe still) do, in trying to explain the concept to colleagues
here at home. One UNICEF officer explained how she had been
introducing her project plan in a small community in rural Cambodia,
working with a local translator. Everything had gone according to plan
until the concept of mainstreaming was brought up
-
at that point the audience looked confused, even shocked, and broke
into heated discussion. The explanation for this came when the
translator clarified that for lack of a better word, he had used the
expression "throwing girls and boys in the river together". So it is
clear that the terminology does not "travel well"
-
which of course only emphasises the importance of translating the
theory into concrete actions and methods of work.
Secondly, violence against women. This a topic that the UN
addressed for the first time in the early 1990s, when it adopted a
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This
declaration
was
used as a basis for the discussions
in Beijing, and later elaborated upon at the Beijing+5
Special Session of the General
Assembly. Violence against women is a universal problem that affect
every country in the world. At the same time, it is a problem with
strong social and cultural underpinnings, which makes the discussions
surrounding it very sensitive and difficult in the UN environment.
So-called honour crimes,
dowry-related
violence and
early and forced marriages are cases in point. In countering what they
see as a one-sided and biased treatment of the issue, some Islamic
countries have sought to define also for example (consensual) teenage
sexual relations, pornography and (voluntary) prostitution as forms of
violence against women. As you can imagine, this has been met with
quite some opposition by most western countries, although opinions and
legislative solutions towards especially prostitution vary widely even
within the European Union.
Domestic violence and sexual abuse on the other hand are topics that
have only very recently been brought to the UN agenda. It is quite
telling that when the Netherlands last autumn introduced a proposal
for a comprehensive resolution dealing with all forms of violence
against women, only the section on domestic violence could be adopted
with consensus. Discussions around these topics are made even more
complicated when this type of violence, most often committed by
private individuals, is brought into the human rights context. Even
the Nordic countries do not always see eye to eye on the type of
terminology used in that context, but what is clear to all is that
violence against women, as a whole, is a human rights issue and that
states have the responsibility to actively combat it, to protect the
victims and to prosecute the offenders. Within the UN,
i1NIFEM
has the
most concrete programmes targeting violence against women.
Thirdly, trafficking in persons. Trafficking is an issue
which at the UN is addressed from three different, equally important
angles. Firstly, trafficking, similarly as violence against women, is
seen as a human rights issue, where states carry the responsibility
for actively countering it, for bringing the perpetrators to justice,
and for protecting the rights of the victims. Secondly, trafficking is
clearly also directly linked to
transnational
organised crime, and therefore
discussed also in the context of criminal justice and crime
prevention. The major achievement of the UN in this regard is of
course the so-called Palermo protocol on trafficking in persons,
supplementing the UN Convention on
Transnational
Organised
Crime. Thirdly, through its root causes, trafficking is also clearly
linked to poverty and the position of women in the societies of the
countries of origin. Clearly there is a reason why trafficking in
persons is often referred to as a contemporary form of slavery. At the
same time, while we often look at trafficking as a phenomenon mostly
linked to sexual exploitation of women and children, transported from
poor countries to rich ones, at the global level it has been
acknowledged that also many other forms of this type of slavery exist.
There are various types of bonded labour, there is trafficking for the
purpose of trade in organs, children are being trafficked for forced
labour or for use as child soldiers, and grown men are being
trafficked from one poor African country to another to be exploited as
forced labourers.
The Nordic and Baltic countries, I am happy to say, have been active
in various UN
fora
in addressing the issue of
trafficking. In fact, the first ever joint
Nordic-Baltic
statement made at the
LTN
Commission on Human
Rights dealt with our regional cooperation in countering trafficking.
This statement has by now already become an annual tradition.
Fourthly,
women, peace and security.
The area of peace and security is the one sector of the work of the UN
where women, until very recently, have been most notably absent. In
terms of personnel, for example, women are still badly
underrepresented in peace operations and field missions. Elisabeth
Rehn,
who served as Special Representative
of the
Secretary-General
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is still today one of the
very few women who has served as the head of a UN field mission. At
the moment, there is only one woman at the level of Special
Representative heading a UN peace operation.
Over the past few years, increased attention has, however, been given
to this field. In October 2000, the Security Council held its first
open debate on women, peace and security and unanimously adopted
resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. The resolution urged
greater involvement of women in all stages of conflict prevention,
management and resolution, at all
decision-making
levels in national, regional and
international institutions. It also called for the incorporation of a
gender perspective into peacekeeping operations and
peace-building
measures and urged all parties to
armed conflict to respect fully international law applicable to the
rights and protection of women and girls, and to take special measures
to protect women and girls from
gender-based
violence.
The crucial importance of this resolution lies in the recognition that
while women are often the first victims of armed conflicts, they are
also key to preventing, managing and resolving them. Peace is
inextricably linked to equality between women and men, and maintaining
and promoting peace and security requires women's equal participation
in all
decision-making.
In adopting the Millennium
Declaration, our heads of state and government accepted this premise.
In the declaration they made a clear link between gender equality,
combating poverty, and stimulating sustainable development
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which, as we know, is the best form of long-term conflict prevention.
By way of conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, let me refer back to a
phrase that was coined in the
mid-1994s
but that still holds
true today: "Human development", it is said, "if not engendered, is
endangered."
Thank you |
