"Beijing and Beyond"

- "Population and Development in Philippines --Status of Women-- -,,

by

Dr. Patricia Licuanan

Chairperson.

United Nations Committee on the Status of Women

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

Distinguished Parliamentarians, Ladies and gentlemen.

I has been five months since the United Nations Fourth World Conference was held in Beijing, China and I must confess that I still suffer from a rather serious hangover from that conference. But unlike with most hangovers, this particular one, I really am not trying to cure. As a matter of fact, I'm determined to nurse this hangover in myself as well as in others so that the spirit of Beijing will help us through the more difficult task of implementing the Platform for Action that came out of the Beijing Conference.

After all the conflict and controversy, all the declarations and debate, the long often tedious, often very difficult negotiations, after all of the reels of videotapes, CNN and all that and the reams of newsprint -- what in fact was accomplished in Beijing? And more important perhaps, what remains to be done?

Allow me to share with you this afternoon my thoughts on the Fourth World Conference on Women -- some reflections on Beijing as well as the challenges beyond Beijing.

First of all, may I just -- could you bear with me as I go through some, a little bit of back-ground on the Fourth World Conference on Women. We all know that there were three United Nations World Conference on Women prior to this one. We had Mexico in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980 and Nairobi in 1985. The United Nations declared 1976-1985 the United Nations Decade on Women: Equality, Development and Peace. At the end of that period the accomplishments of the decade were reviewed in Nairobi and the output was the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women to the Year 2000.

In the year 1 990 there was no world conference, even though there were world conferences every five years prior to that. Instead the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women at an extended session reviewed the implementation of the Forward-Looking Strategies. This review revealed the following important findings: first, that there had been significant changes right after the Nairobi Conference particularly in the area of legislation. This might interest you as parliamentarians, as countries consciously reviewed existing laws and changed those that were discriminatory towards women in order to conform to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women or CDO. So, that was the first finding. The second finding was, given this how-