Declaration for Economic
Justice and Women's Empowerment
Five years after Beijing, fifteen years after Nairobi and
twenty-five years after Mexico City, words are not enough. While women have
played a key role in urging governments to implement the Beijing Platform for
Action and made significant strides through their own efforts, for the vast
majority of women the situation has gotten worse.
We are women from diverse groups and communities who use an integrated
feminist analysis to assess progress towards the achievement of the goals of
the Platform for Action. Women's values confirm compassion, caring,
cooperation, economic justice and diversities among women and respect for
human rights. These human rights are universal and indivisible -- civil and
political rights cannot be realised without the protection of social, economic
and cultural rights. We embrace solidarity, equity, equality, democracy and
participation. We affirm public responsibility, transparency, justice and
accountability.
Many of us have worked for years -- despite resistance from member states --
to imbue major UN conferences with a critique of the multiple systems that
oppress women. Encouraged by the successful challenge to the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) in Seattle and by the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel debt,
we turn now to the review of the Beijing Platform for Action. Over the last
five years a nexus of neo-liberal macro-economic policies has deeply eroded
the socio-economic condition of many of the world’s women. Given the
far-reaching impact of these policies and the attendant crises – financial,
military, social -- which they have spawned, we are dismayed by the weakness
of the current Outcome Document regarding economic rights. Proposed actions do
not address the clear evidence of devastation in women's lives as described in
the document itself. Follow-up has largely disregarded the policy framework
within which implementation of the Platform must occur.
This policy framework is shaped by a global economic system controlled by the
International Financial Institutions (including regional banks, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank), the World Trade
Organisation (WTO), multinational corporations, certain industrialised
governments, and elites in the north and the south. This global system
threatens the interests of the vast majority of the world’s people,
particularly women, especially rural women, women living in poverty and
indigenous peoples. This structure promotes greed, competitiveness,
concentration of power, consumerism, individualism, glorification of markets,
and commodification of people, women's bodies and all aspects of life.
The current economic policies assume that expanding "free" markets
will solve all human problems. But ample evidence demonstrates that this
“market fundamentalism” can be detrimental to people's health and
longevity. Social relations cannot be reduced to those of producer and
consumer. Moreover, economic markets superimposed on vast power differentials
cannot operate in an equitable or just way. We must ask: what kinds of markets
are we talking about, who controls them, whom do they serve and under what
conditions do they operate?
The neo-liberal economic model has led to an increase in poverty and to new
forms of poverty, affecting women disproportionately. Neo-liberalism has
created a growing disparity between rich and poor both within and between
countries. These inequities, coupled with increasing violence against women,
loss of rights, geographic and economic dislocation, and the erosion of
democracy have become undeniable even to proponents of neo-liberal policies.
We are dismayed by the deterioration of distributive justice, the erosion of
public services (especially health and education), the appropriation and
privatisation of public goods, and the shifting of responsibility for public
services to the private sector, NGOs and families -- especially women. We are
alarmed at the increasing numbers of children forced to work, to live on the
street, to engage in criminal activities and to serve as soldiers. We are
deeply concerned about the increasing marginalisation and insecurity of work,
trafficking in women and children, dislocation of families due to migration,
undermining of families and communities of support, destruction of local
communities, misappropriation of indigenous cultures and continued
marginalisation and neocolonisation of indigenous peoples, imposition of
commercial culture, and the ongoing destruction of the environment. We are
appalled at increasing militarisation and nuclearisation, at public spending
for these programs, and at the lucrative trade in narcotics and arms that has
distorted national economies and many communities. We are alarmed by the
intensification of punitive systems and mechanisms of social control. Finally,
we are especially outraged at increasing racism, xenophobia, and homophobia
which jeopardise the lives of all people.
Trade liberalisation has created market conditions which even governments find
hard to regulate. In recent years, the WTO has emerged as one of the most
powerful international economic agencies, and has been used by transnational
corporations and powerful governments to impose new rules and disciplines on
peoples and nations. These rules pry open markets and stunt local independent
development capabilities, especially in the poorest countries. In addition,
many of these rules generate human rights violations, especially social and
economic human rights of women.
Government actions to address women’s poverty are inadequate. Governmental
and inter-governmental programs to provide women access to markets do not
guarantee women’s livelihood because the market structure is inherently
inequitable. Micro enterprise, microcredit and poverty alleviation schemes are
not panaceas for economic injustice. The value of these strategies is
proportional to their capacity to address the causes of poverty and to rectify
power imbalances, rather than perpetuate poverty and women's secondary
economic status.
The current negotiating text fails to systematically address the
macro-economic policy framework which privileges economic growth at the
expense of people’s well-being and human rights. It ignores the call for
debt cancellation and accepts debt relief schemes that are too limited and
conditional. The text disregards underlying structural issues such as unequal
terms of trade. It ignores research demonstrating negative consequences of
structural adjustment policies and deregulation on women, their families and
communities. By failing to address the underlying causes of poverty,
governments gathered for the Beijing Plus 5 Review would continue to violate
women's economic and social rights, and contribute to worsening conditions of
poverty around the globe.