By far, the 4th World Conference on Women was by far the largest UN conference ever, with estimates running up to forty-five thousand (45,000) to fifty thousand (50,000) people attending both the inter-governmental meeting and the non-governmental forum in Huairuo. Of course, it was in that non-governmental meeting that you have the largest groups. But all told, there were about forty-five thousand (45,000) to fifty thousand (50,000) people.

I guess, in a sense, a unique feature of the 4th World Conference was the type of controversial issues that were very heatedly discussed there. Perhaps, whenever I was asked to summarize what were the main areas of controversy and they asked this of me often be-cause -- well, I chaired the preparatory committee and worked, it was Beijing, and I also chaired the main committee which was the main committee that was negotiating the document. I've summarized it as the 3 R's: rights, resources and reproductive health. These are quite interesting to this group of parliamentarians.

In the area of rights, we debated at quite length human rights instruments and terminology. There was a debate on whether the term "universal" should be used before the phrase "human rights". Also, under this section, you would have the discussions on political issues, the role of NOO s in civil society.

In the area of resources, the second R, we would have the traditional north-south very specific and very controversial debates on the resources needed to implement the plat-form. This was very heated also because the Group of Seventy-Seven (77) felt very strongly that there should be new and additional resources to implement the platform for action, whereas, the European union and particularly, specifically, the donor countries were a lot more conservative about one thing, new resources. And they felt that all re-sources should just be re-mobilized or, perhaps, re-deployed for these purposes.

Finally, the area of reproductive health. I think, basically here, would fall a lot of the religious and cultural issues: the issues of gender, sexuality, reproductive health, sexual and reproductive rights, family and family structure and the debate on sexual orientation.

Another distinguishing feature, I believe, of the conference was the whole emotional tone of the debate. The debates were probably more heated and more emotional than in past conferences. This was the only world conference where women's issues, I'm talking now of world conferences on women, where women's issues were the main agenda rather that geopolitical issues. In fact, as Senator Shahani recalls, because she was Secretary General at the 3rd World Conference in Nairobi, that there are heated debates until the wee hours of morning and, perhaps, the one that they were debating up to the very last minute was the use of the term "Zionism" that period when we were fighting the Middle East war.

And, basically, I think geopolitical issues have a way really of getting into the agenda of any world conference. And I am not saying that geopolitical issues were not discussed in Beijing. They certainly were. But, in addition, you did have very, very heated debates which were concentrated on women's issues. The reason for this is that women's issues are very close to home, I think, and elicit very strong emotional reactions because, in a