SECTION V,#A:THE OFFICIAL UN CONFERENCE

Women delegates protesting at the Beijing conference Women delegates gagged to symolize China's silencing of Tibetan women's voices at the Beijing conference

SECTION V: THE OFFICIAL UN CONFERENCE

   
The official governmental meeting of the UN FWCW took place in 
Beijing September 4-15, 1995. Attended by delegates from 181 
countries, it represented the first opportunity in 10 years for
many women to review the progress of womankind thus far, and to
address both the international community and the world media 
regarding aspirations for their own advancement into the 21st century.

A. Function and Organisation of the Official UN Conference

The primary function of the UN FWCW was to finalise negotiations
on the Platform for Action, which began during the Regional 
Preparatory Conferences (see Section VIII and Appendix III).

Government delegates negotiated the document line by line in two
separate Working Groups.  Additionally smaller sub-committees,
referred to as Contact Groups, met to negotiate particularly
difficult paragraphs. The government delegates addressed the 
Chair on language they wished to modify, retain or remove while
at the same time NGOs were able to work the floor. This UN
Conference was the first ever where NGOs were given the privilege
of lobbying the drafting committees.  

To strategise for the lobbying effort, NGOs organised themselves
into over 40 regional and thematic caucuses focusing on issues 
such as human rights, refugee women, indigenous women and the 
environment.The caucus meetings were used to assess progress 
during the previous day, relate new developments and study previous
UN documents which could provide the much-needed precedents.It was 
during the caucus meetings that alternate wording was drafted and 
plans made as to which governments should receive NGO interventions
and which rationales would be the most likely to develop consensus.

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