PH women craft global women’s rights agenda

MANILA, Philippines – Helena Benitez, Rosario Manalo, Leticia Ramos-Shahani, and Patricia Licuanan made history for the Philippines.

In the history of the United Nations, they made the Philippines the only country that presided over 4 world conferences on women, and that led the difficult negotiations to craft the world’s agenda for the human rights of women and girls. 

As the world observed the International Day of Women on March 8 and the Women’s Month in March, this year’s observance also marked the 20^th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995. That conference produced the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), considered the landmark document that prescribed a framework in advancing women’s rights that has become the guidance of countries in formulating policies for women.

The world conference on women in Beijing was presided over by Licuanan as chairperson of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) from 1994 to 1995. Licuanan also chaired the subsequent Asia Pacific NGO Forum in Beijing +10 in 2005 and Beijing +15 in 2010 that periodically assessed the BPfA in the region.

Prior to Licuanan’s leadership in the Beijing conference, Shahani led the final drafting of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), ratified in 1981 and considered the international bill of rights for women. She was supported immensely during the preparations for the convention by Helena Benitez, then the chairperson of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

Before Beijing, the first 3 UN world conferences on women were held in Mexico in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, and Nairobi in 1985. These Filipino women persevered even as the conferences were thwarted by the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Cold War, the aggressive pressure from ethnic fundamentalists, and the lobbying of religious conservatives led by the Vatican.

Manalo worked with Shahani in the third women’s conference in Nairobi and, along with Benitez, made sure the conference helped shape the agenda for women despite the differences of the Americans and Russians in the politics of the Cold War. Shahani was the CWS chairperson from 1974 to 1975 and Manalo in 1984 to 1985.

Women’s voices

Shahani, Manalo, and Licuanan came together last week during the Women and Media Workshop and Intergenerational Forum conducted by the Women’s Feature Service Philippines, the all-women news service, in a forum called “Strengthening Women’s Voices in Post-2015 Development Agenda through the Media” in Manila attended by young Filipino women journalists.

In the intergenerational forum, the 3 women exhorted the young journalists to “have the passion to recommit to the goals” that they helped shape when they were leading the international conferences. Shahani said “women have to make men stronger by raising sons who will be strong to honor their mother and to be able to do the housework.” She reminded that “equality should not be at the expense of the men.”

She said that work for the good of women had been going on since 1975 during the first women’s conference in Mexico that was headed by a man, the country’s foreign minister, and the second conference in Copenhagen that was marred by the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Shahani said the Nairobi conference succeeded because she asked the UN to hold cocktails every day so that the women could meet and discuss congenially at a time when the international feminist movement was still looming. She was then the secretary-general of the World Conference on the UN Decade of Women, which was declared by the UN upon the urging of the women in the Mexico conference, from 1975 to 1985.

It was also in this conference that Shahani, barring any clearance from the Philippine government, completed the draft with a mostly Filipino UN staff. She forged an unlikely partnership with the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which was the only state willing to support the Philippines in filing the draft CEDAW for UN consideration at the height of the Cold War.

CEDAW, which explicitly defines discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for action by governments to end discrimination, also targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations. It is the first human rights treaty to affirm the reproductive rights of women.

Shahani told women journalists during the WFS intergenerational forum that CEDAW gained ground when rape became a crime against a woman’s right as a human being and not merely a crime against her chastity.

As journalists and as women, she asked the forum participants to actively criticize the passing of useless laws in the country, as well as criticize the poor implementation of good laws.

“Attend court hearings. And remember that once you lose your sovereignty, you lose the power of your government,” she said, citing the Pemberton case as an example. She also said that if guilt is established by the court, then the American accused of killing transgender Jennifer Laude should be punished. Sadly, she said justice “only reached the regional trial court of Makati.”

She said it is better to look at the bigger picture in relation to taking action, instead of following the bandwagon. Citing the BPfA as the bearer of “soul, heart, blood and spirit of persons who fought for the rights of women as human beings,” she urged the journalists to “be students of history and stand, help those who had gone before you. Do what you have to do now towards the future.”

Women’s rights

Manalo recalled that even before it became the BPfA, the document was badly bruised by brackets in more than 50 of its paragraphs that meant conservative, fundamentalist, and religious groups did not agree with the terminologies and phrases at that time, such as “sexual identity” and “sexual orientation,” among others.

Licuanan said women’s rights issues were reiterated in Beijing, such as women’s work with remuneration and value; a woman’s right over her body; the rights of girls and the rights of women migrant workers. 

Licuanan, a social psychologist who now heads the Commission on Higher Education, presided over the Beijing conference that gathered more than 50,000 women of various local, national and international positions, both in informal and formal life situations. 

“While women in the 1990s faced a whole range of crises at the time when we were negotiating in Beijing, we have new crises that we need to confront today,” she told the intergenerational forum. 

“Things have changed – 20 years made a lot of difference,” she said. While women and the environment were deemed irrelevant at that time, now they are widely discussed. There is now a better gender disaggregated data to help civil society and the government act on the welfare of women.

Reproductive and sexual rights, however, continue to be contentious issues of discussion, and “equality in law is not equivalent to equality in fact.” Gender mainstreaming is an accepted strategy, but she said it will only succeed if there is a stand-alone gender equality mechanism that ensures the protection of women’s human rights.

She commended the Commission on Audit for ensuring that the Gender and Development Budget that is now part of the Magna Carta on Women, is properly used. 5% of the budget of the local government or government agency goes to women’s issues and programs.

“Allies come in all shapes and forms, sizes. We must make friends, develop partnerships, and find champions of the women’s cause,” she said. – Rappler.com